In­de­pen­dent Sen­a­tor Rolph Bal­go­b­in says he doesn't see why the State has to con­cern it­self with what hap­pens be­hind closed doors be­tween two con­sent­ing adults, what­ev­er their sex. Bal­go­b­in voiced this dur­ing yes­ter­day's Sen­ate de­bate on the Chil­dren Bill.

Not­ing the law's de­f­i­n­i­tion of the crime of bug­gery, he said there are some places around the world where tech­nol­o­gy can make it pos­si­ble for a fe­male to bug­ger an­oth­er fe­male or a fe­male to bug­ger a male. He added, "Are we say­ing in 2012 we are go­ing to ce­ment in place here the no­tion that ho­mo­sex­u­al­i­ty con­tin­ues to be il­le­gal? That does not have to be a choice that any­body else makes."

Not­ing the law he said, "If two 16-year-olds are ma­ture enough to have sex, why does it have to be a boy and a girl? Why? Who said that? I heard the min­is­ter say in an­oth­er fo­rum that we need to ex­am­ine this is­sue of ho­mo­sex­u­al­i­ty." Query­ing how one would crim­i­nalise a per­son for a same-sex re­la­tion­ship, and not­ing that the Oba­ma ad­min­is­tra­tion "had to come out and sup­port" gay mar­riages, Bal­go­b­in said he didn't know if he would want to go so far.

But he did not see why the State should con­cern it­self with con­sent­ing adults be­hind closed doors, he said, "Un­less we con­tin­ue to have this kind of Or­wellian log­ic here where we con­tin­ue to try to con­trol what peo­ple do in their pri­vate mo­ments."

Bal­go­b­in ques­tioned the age at which it was all right for chil­dren to be­gin hav­ing sex. He not­ed a re­cent in­ter­na­tion­al re­port said Caribbean chil­dren be­gin hav­ing sex ear­li­er than all chil­dren in the world.

Bal­go­b­in said, "So I'd like to know if the age is 12, that is not OK, I'm not feel­ing 12. It's not irie. It can't be 12. That is pre-pu­bes­cent." He said he hoped for clar­i­ty on the ho­mo­sex­u­al and bi­sex­u­al is­sue and mar­riage age.