On Fri­day, the Coali­tion Ad­vo­cat­ing for In­clu­sion of Sex­u­al Ori­en­ta­tion (CAISO), staged a march from the of­fice of the Equal Op­por­tu­ni­ty Com­mis­sion (EOC) to the en­trance of the Par­lia­ment at the In­ter­na­tion­al Wa­ter­front. The small, qui­et aware­ness rais­ing event sought to bring to the at­ten­tion of min­is­ters com­ing to Par­lia­ment was their cam­paign to bring more mod­ern lan­guage to the Equal Op­por­tu­ni­ty Amend­ment Bill pro­claimed in 2001.

The act goes some dis­tance to­ward cod­i­fy­ing what con­sti­tutes an act of dis­crim­i­na­tion and the penal­ties for be­ing found guilty of such ac­tions, par­tic­u­lar­ly in in­sti­tu­tion­al sit­u­a­tions such as ed­u­ca­tion and em­ploy­ment. In re­cent months, the Equal Op­por­tu­ni­ties Com­mis­sion who had a pos­i­tive meet­ing with CAISO mem­bers be­fore the march, has been rais­ing its pro­file and go­ing to the pub­lic to stim­u­late dis­cus­sion about what con­sti­tutes dis­crim­i­na­tion in Trinidad and To­ba­go so­ci­ety.

But CAISO be­lieves that the ex­ist­ing bill doesn't go far enough in clar­i­fy­ing three ar­eas of dis­crim­i­na­tion left un­de­fined in the ex­ist­ing bill. "Add all Three," the or­gan­i­sa­tion's key point to min­is­ters on Fri­day, iden­ti­fies the need to guar­an­tee equal­i­ty for those like­ly to face un­equal treat­ment as a re­sult of their age, HIV sta­tus and sex­u­al ori­en­ta­tion.

A red flag about these omis­sions was raised as ear­ly as May 15, 2001, when the late Prof, Ju­lian Ken­ny, then an in­de­pen­dent Sen­a­tor, re­mind­ed his col­leagues that the bill had come up for de­bate at 2 am and that there were mat­ters he raised then which de­mand­ed a sec­ond look.

In Hansard Prof Ken­ny is record­ed as ask­ing: "When you say: "'sex' does not in­clude sex­u­al pref­er­ence or ori­en­ta­tion;" It means that it does not mean het­ero­sex­u­als or bi­sex­u­als or ho­mo­sex­u­als or au­to­sex­u­als, so what does it mean then?"

"I would in­ter­pret that this dis­crim­i­na­tion is against the su­per­fi­cial­i­ty of the per­son in terms of the sec­ondary sex­u­al char­ac­ter. So the law is ac­tu­al­ly say­ing you can­not dis­crim­i­nate against a per­son who looks like a male or who looks like a fe­male."

Prof Ken­ny then con­tin­ued, in his en­gag­ing­ly per­son­al style, to ex­plain the many ways he felt dis­crim­i­nat­ed against be­cause of his age. CAISO has tak­en up Prof Ken­ny's chal­lenge of 12 years past and is now cir­cu­lat­ing a let­ter for pub­lic sig­na­ture urg­ing Prime Min­is­ter Kam­la Per­sad-Bisses­sar and Mem­bers of Par­lia­ment to ho­n­our the un­der­tak­ing giv­en by Pres­i­dent George Maxwell Richards at the June 2011 open­ing of Par­lia­ment.

At that cer­e­mo­ny, the Pres­i­dent en­cour­aged Par­lia­men­tar­i­ans to con­sid­er that: "Our poli­cies and prac­tices must re­flect a de­ter­mi­na­tion to en­sure equal op­por­tu­ni­ty for all of our cit­i­zens, re­gard­less of po­lit­i­cal af­fil­i­a­tion or any oth­er sub­jec­tive con­sid­er­a­tion."

The CAISO march might have be­gun at the EOC, but the dis­cus­sion prop­er­ly end­ed where it be­longed with the mem­bers of Par­lia­ment, who will be vot­ing on the amend­ments in com­ing weeks. The EOC, af­ter all, is on­ly em­pow­ered to act on the laws against dis­crim­i­na­tion that are cur­rent­ly in force.

The is­sues that CAISO is fight­ing to have recog­nised are not in­signif­i­cant. Op­por­tu­ni­ties for dis­crim­i­na­tion, even sub­tle in­stances of it, fun­da­men­tal­ly change the qual­i­ty of life of many cit­i­zens of Trinidad and To­ba­go. From chil­dren in pu­ber­ty wrestling with is­sues of nascent sex­u­al­i­ty to se­nior cit­i­zens fac­ing need­less scruti­ny as a re­sult of their ad­vanced years, these slights and zones of dis­com­fort rep­re­sent an es­sen­tial un­fair­ness and di­min­ish hu­man dig­ni­ty need­less­ly.

Fac­ing these mat­ters head on de­mands that the State prove will­ing to sep­a­rate a sec­u­lar re­sponse from a re­li­gious one. It is not enough for the State to as­sent to de­c­la­ra­tions of hu­man rights with­out putting teeth in­to lo­cal laws which will guar­an­tee those rights to in­di­vid­u­als. Hate­ful be­hav­iour, of­fered op­por­tu­ni­ty be­cause of omis­sions in leg­is­la­tion, win this coun­try noth­ing and di­min­ish­es us all as a peo­ple.