Kudos for the excellent work done by the T&T Constitution Reform Commission for a non-compromising, honest and sagacious report after a nation-wide consultation campaign–a bright spot in the forward journey of our nation to restore the moral fabric of our society.On the contrary, it is downright disappointing to hear the response of a distinguished man of the cloth, that gay rights be included in the constitution. These are the conflicts of morality that create undue confusion and chaos in a society.
Truth is first ontological (rooted in the person and character of God) before it is epistemological (known or expressed by the human mind)–objective in nature and origin. Civil law itself presupposes objective truth, yet no Government or human being determines the latter.There has to be an indisputable authority, a master creator who has set the moral codes for the success of human civilisation. Equality of rights, therefore, must not be divorced from established truth.
Wikipedia describes human rights as "moral principles that set out certain standards of human behaviour." They are "inalienable fundamental rights to which a person is inherently entitled simply because she or he is a human being."
Further, the United Nations Human Rights (Office of the High Commissioner for Human Rights) cites William Blackstone in his Commentaries on the Laws of England, 1:93: "Those rights, then, which God and nature have established, and therefore called natural rights, such as life and liberty, need not the aid of human laws to be more effectually invested in every man than they are; neither do they receive any additional strength when declared by the municipal laws to be inviolable.
On the contrary, no human legislature has power to abridge or destroy them, unless the owner shall himself commit some act that amounts to a forfeiture." It would be a forfeiture, for example, for an adult man to be sexually oriented to child sex, since it violates the right of the child and the laws of God.
Similarly, GBLTs are humans, but "the right to love who they want irrespective," becomes a forfeiture if that love emotion is misdirected contrary to nature and God's creative order, and becomes a violation of human sexual rights. Further, the egalitarian nature of human rights must not be misinterpreted; if certain "rights," for example, are isolated and akin only to a small sector of the society, they do not qualify as human rights. So that the so-called "rights" of a man to have sex with another man, or a woman with another woman, cannot be human rights since such acts are neither inherent nor universal to all human beings.
There must be a moral standard to which society adheres less we find ourselves governed by the law of the jungle. We are in danger of barking in the face of nature and God Himself, and standing under His judgment, if we blatantly ignore purpose and design merely for pleasure. It would be inappropriate to use the law to cover such rebellion.
Apostle J Vernon Duncan
Divine Encounter Fellowship Ministries