As far as I have been able to ascertain, and I have been following the LGBT controversy closely, no one and no group has advocated for LGBT marriage, only that people born LGBT be afforded the same basic civic human rights as are guaranteed to anyone else who is a citizen of this country.Marriage tends to be a religious rite and it is up to any religious group to allow or forbid anything that is against their beliefs. The Catholic Church and their archbishop have the perfect right to forbid it in their church.
If you are a Catholic, and a truly-believing Catholic, you must obey the doctrines of the Catholic Church. As our Constitution guarantees freedom of religious belief, no law should interfere with that.Most of those arguing against the decriminalisation of LGBT argue against "gay marriage," which no one has even asked for, for goodness' sake.
This is what is known as a "straw man" argument. You make up an extreme argument which does not exist anywhere else, then argue against it. It is known as a method of "dishonest argument" which UWI students are taught in the survey course they have to take and study in the textbook Straight and Crooked Thinking by Thouless.Perhaps that is why educated people don't use it.
The same tactic was used years ago against miscegenation...the intimate relationship between people of different races, which, if still on the lawbooks, would mean what is possibly half of the population of T&T, including my children, grandchildren and great-grandchild, never having been born. T&T would be a far poorer society without them.At one time there was a law against the Shouter Baptist religion, and thankfully that was repealed as well.
Isn't it about time we adhered to the UN Convention on Human Rights so that our envoys, including our Prime Minister, are not embarrassed before the whole world, which now knows that, although we have ratified the convention, we are not fully adhering to it? T&T, with this exception has aDiana Mahabir-Wyatt proud and worthy record as a country that has an enviable record of human rights.
Diana Mahabir-Wyatt