Den­zil Mo­hammed

The ma­jor­i­ty of peo­ple who op­pose equal civ­il rights for gays are not very ed­u­cat­ed. A 2009 sur­vey con­duct­ed by the UWI-St Au­gus­tine ANSA McAL Psy­cho­log­i­cal Re­search Cen­tre for the Min­istry of the Peo­ple and So­cial De­vel­op­ment said so. It was ti­tled "Sur­vey on the De­gree of Con­for­mi­ty to Norms and Val­ues in Trinidad and To­ba­go."

Un­der the sec­tion "per­cep­tions of ho­mo­sex­u­al­i­ty," it found that while 69 per cent of re­spon­dents over­all were un­sup­port­ive of equal rights for gays, that sup­port var­ied by ed­u­ca­tion­al at­tain­ment. Where­as on­ly 15 per cent of pri­ma­ry-ed­u­cat­ed per­sons said they sup­port­ed equal rights to gays, near­ly three times that fig­ure of ter­tiary-ed­u­cat­ed re­spon­dents voiced sup­port.

So, it seems, some ed­u­ca­tion is nec­es­sary. Here's a lie: peo­ple choose to be gay. Here's a fact: be­ing gay is not a choice just as straight peo­ple don't choose to be straight. Here's an­oth­er lie: gay par­ents can make their chil­dren gay. Here's an­oth­er fact: chil­dren of gay par­ents are no more like­ly to be gay than those of straight par­ents as a di­rect con­se­quence of the first fact.

Here's a thought: gay mar­riage will ru­in fam­i­ly life and bring so­cial de­struc­tion. Here's an ex­am­ple: in New Eng­land where I live, the ma­jor­i­ty of states have le­galised gay mar­riage. They en­joy the low­est crime rate in the US, one of the low­est un­em­ploy­ment rates, the most high­ly ed­u­cat­ed pop­u­la­tion and the di­vorce rate has dropped to pre-World War II lev­els.

A lie: T&T is not "that bad­ly off" when it comes to laws against gays. A fact: T&T law crim­i­nalis­es con­sen­su­al sex "per anum" by both gay and straight cou­ples. It crim­i­nalis­es such sex acts to the same ex­tent it does bes­tial­i­ty (25 years' im­pris­on­ment). T&T's pun­ish­ment is 250 per cent greater than that of Ja­maica.

There's more. By law, singers who hap­pened to be gay, like Sir El­ton John for the Ply­mouth Jazz Fes­ti­val, can­not be al­lowed in­to the coun­try. He would be con­sid­ered in the same cat­e­go­ry as "pros­ti­tutes, id­iots, im­be­ciles, fee­ble-mind­ed per­sons, per­sons suf­fer­ing from de­men­tia and in­sane per­sons."

An­oth­er myth? There is no "in­sti­tu­tion­alised dis­crim­i­na­tion" of gays in T&T? The facts: a per­son has no le­gal re­course in T&T if any of the fol­low­ing oc­curs be­cause he or she is gay: is fired from a job; is de­nied op­por­tu­ni­ties for pro­mo­tion, trans­fer, train­ing or any oth­er job ben­e­fit; is ex­pelled from or de­nied ad­mis­sion to a school; is de­nied a bank ac­count, loan or cred­it; is turned away at a ho­tel or en­ter­tain­ment venue; is de­nied ac­cess to use of pub­lic space; is evict­ed from a dwelling.

'Nat­ur­al' & oth­er church ar­gu­ments

It is no stretch of the imag­i­na­tion that the less in­for­ma­tion one has, the more like­ly it is that one would ve­he­ment­ly and bliss­ful­ly op­pose things about which one doesn't know. The sad part of this is that those peo­ple and or­gan­i­sa­tions are far more vo­cal and in­flu­en­tial. Like the church and its fol­low­ers: Pen­te­costal, Catholic, Open Bible, closed Bible, As­sem­bly, scat­ter, New Light, Di­vine Light, plen­ty light and oth­ers. They have long been vo­cif­er­ous in their op­po­si­tion to equal civ­il rights for all.

They preach con­tra­dic­to­ry mes­sages of "love the sin­ner, hate the sin" from their con­tra­dic­to­ry book of laws, the Bible. They spend thou­sands in news­pa­per ads about "abom­i­na­tions," "hate­ful things in the eyes of God" and "un­nat­ur­al" peo­ple and acts when their pro­fessed mis­sion is na­tion-build­ing, God's work and world peace.

Their con­tin­ued as­ser­tion of things "nat­ur­al" be­ing God's way as op­posed to the "un­nat­ur­al" things like gays brings in­to ques­tion the very nat­ur­al process of how Adam, Eve and their sec­ond cousin Steve were brought to life. Not very smart.

Re­li­gious lead­ers, pub­lic per­son­al­i­ties and ra­dio DJs-cum-so­cial an­a­lysts have spent every giv­en op­por­tu­ni­ty in the me­dia talk­ing about this one is­sue more than any oth­er.

Si­mul­ta­ne­ous­ly, they as­sert, like Sat Ma­haraj did when he spoke at length about gays as "odd­i­ties" and "sex­u­al de­vi­a­tions," that there are "more press­ing con­cerns in T&T" than equal rights for all cit­i­zens. In­deed there are. The near­ly 4,000 cit­i­zens mur­dered in the past decade cer­tain­ly war­rant their me­dia time and mon­ey.

The fact that the church's very con­gre­ga­tion, young black males, are more like­ly to die by homi­cide than by traf­fic ac­ci­dent, Aids, sui­cide and gay­ness com­bined, should get their fo­cus. Even in the pre­sen­ta­tion of in­for­ma­tion on the top­ic, some­thing sin­is­ter or per­haps plain stu­pid emerges.

An Ex­press sto­ry last week was head­lined "Govt re­fus­es to bend on gay sex." Per­haps the writer of the head­line was try­ing to be clever. And Tony Deyal, long known for his wit, wrote on the top­ic un­der the head­line "Touch­ing bot­tom," where he re­ferred to two gay men caught in a com­pro­mis­ing po­si­tion on a cruise ship's "poop deck" as "in deep poop." Shake­speare would bite his thumb at that one.

Politi­cians are call­ing for pub­lic dis­cus­sion on the is­sue of equal civ­il rights for all, in­clud­ing for gays. With all the ta-ta be­ing bandied about on the top­ic what we re­al­ly need is more ed­u­ca­tion and few­er myths. Let's start the dis­cus­sion there.