Tem­po­rary Op­po­si­tion Sen­a­tor Shar­rie Ali says leg­is­la­tors must deal with the con­tro­ver­sial is­sue of same-sex re­la­tion­ships. She said this dur­ing Tues­day's Sen­ate de­bate on a Bill to Amend the Mis­cel­la­neous Pro­vi­sions (Ma­ter­ni­ty Pro­tec­tion and the Mas­ters and Ser­vants Or­di­nance) Bill, 2012. It was lat­er ap­proved in the Up­per House.

Last Fri­day, a group of peo­ple demon­strat­ed out­side the Par­lia­ment at Tow­er D, Wa­ter­front Com­plex, Wright­son Road, Port-of-Spain, de­mand­ing an end to what they claimed was dis­crim­i­na­tion against them. "In the na­ture of be­ing pro­gres­sive, let's look at same-sex re­la­tion­ships. Let's raise the bar, not by one hur­dle, but by five," she said.

Lat­er in the marathon 12-hour sit­ting, In­de­pen­dent Sen­a­tor Corinne Bap­tiste-McK­night said a lot of the bul­ly­ing tak­ing place at schools was against boys sus­pect­ed of be­ing gay. Bap­tiste-McK­night was con­tribut­ing to de­bate on the Chil­dren Bill 2012, which seeks to pro­tect chil­dren from abuse.

She said sen­a­tors can­not be in Par­lia­ment "and be­have as if we are the on­ly coun­try in the world where there are no ho­mo­sex­u­als, no gays, no les­bians, no trans­ves­tites." Bap­tiste-McK­night said one on­ly has to be in Curepe at a late hour to ap­pre­ci­ate the dif­fi­cul­ty in dif­fer­en­ti­at­ing be­tween male and fe­male.

"What hap­pen? Aren't we mak­ing laws for them too?" she asked. She said sen­a­tors should do all they can to as­sist all gay chil­dren. Bap­tiste-McK­night said she would "hate to think that the 31 of us in here are so ho­mo­pho­bic that we would shut our eyes to see­ing an in­fant, a child, suf­fer through no fault of his or her own." De­bate on the bill is ex­pect­ed to re­sume to­mor­row from 1.30 pm.