Five years ago, a sur­vey fund­ed by the British High Com­mis­sion and con­duct­ed by the Bar­ba­dos-based Caribbean De­vel­op­ment Re­search Ser­vices Inc (CADRES), re­vealed the ma­jor­i­ty of peo­ple in T&T are tol­er­ant or ac­cept­ing of ho­mo­sex­u­als rather than ho­mo­pho­bic. It had al­so found LGBTQI is­sues are not as po­lit­i­cal­ly dan­ger­ous as politi­cians think.

Five and a half years lat­er, the LGBTQI com­mu­ni­ty hit a mile­stone when in April 2018, the T&T High Court de­clared the coun­try's bug­gery law un­con­sti­tu­tion­al, as it in­fringed on the rights of LGBT cit­i­zens and crim­i­nalised con­sen­su­al sex­u­al acts be­tween adults.

On Ju­ly 28, 2018, it cel­e­brat­ed yet an­oth­er land­mark when var­i­ous groups from the LGBTQI com­mu­ni­ty, un­der the ban­ner Pride TT, came to­geth­er to stage its in­au­gur­al "Pride Pa­rade."

On Fri­day for a sec­ond time, cel­e­bra­tions were held which be­gan with a trans flag rais­ing at the Par­lia­ment and cul­mi­nat­ed with a fair, mi­ni-con­cert, and street pa­rade.

This year’s theme was dubbed ‘Eq­ui­ty and Equal­i­ty for All', with a spe­cial fo­cus on the trans-com­mu­ni­ty, of­ten alien­at­ed and un­able to prac­tice their hu­man right to live their truth.

Pride TT’s chief co­or­di­na­tor Rudolph Hanamji laud­ed all who made the cel­e­bra­tion hap­pen and thanked all stake­hold­ers in­volved who would have put aside their "per­son­al feel­ings" and so­cio-eco­nom­ic dif­fer­ences to help the LGBTQI com­mu­ni­ty con­tin­ue its fight for com­plete so­cial ac­cep­tance and in­clu­sion.

But even with these turn­ing points, one thing still re­mains un­done and the LGBTQI com­mu­ni­ty wants pol­i­cy­mak­ers to un­der­stand that un­til the Equal Op­por­tu­ni­ty Act (EOA) is amend­ed to in­clude sex­u­al pref­er­ence and ori­en­ta­tion, this group is like­ly to face con­tin­ued dis­crim­i­na­tion.

Speak­ing to Sun­day Guardian via tele­phone, Col­in Robin­son, di­rec­tor of Coali­tion Ad­vo­cat­ing for In­clu­sion of Sex­u­al Ori­en­ta­tion: Sex and Gen­der Jus­tice (Caiso), said dis­crim­i­na­tion against LGBTQI peo­ple was re­al.

"There is no doubt dis­crim­i­na­tion hap­pens to LGBTQI peo­ple, just as it hap­pens on the ba­sis of race and gen­der and re­li­gion. It is one form of dis­crim­i­na­tion that hap­pens. We are not say­ing that it hap­pens every time but dis­crim­i­na­tion hap­pens in T&T and it hap­pens to dif­fer­ent kinds of peo­ple for dif­fer­ent rea­sons," Robin­son ex­plained.

He added, how­ev­er, like the pro­tec­tion it of­fers for oth­er types of dis­crim­i­na­tion, LGBTQI peo­ple do not have pro­tec­tion un­der the EOA be­cause it not on­ly does not in­clude them but it out right­ly ex­cludes them.

The EOA pro­hibits dis­crim­i­na­tion to pro­mote equal­i­ty of op­por­tu­ni­ty be­tween peo­ple of dif­fer­ent sta­tus. "It chrac­teris­es "sta­tus" as the sex, race, eth­nic­i­ty, ori­gin (in­clud­ing ge­o­graph­i­cal ori­gin), re­li­gion, mar­i­tal sta­tus, or

dis­abil­i­ty, but cat­e­gor­i­cal­ly adds that "sex" does not in­clude sex­u­al pref­er­ence or ori­en­ta­tion.

At the same time, Robin­son point­ed out, that the EOC’s view was dif­fer­ent, as it has said the act should be amend­ed. How­ev­er, this could on­ly be done via Par­lia­ment.

He said Caiso has been lob­by­ing for the past eight years for this and was hap­py that oth­er groups have now joined in the fight along the way.

Caiso has been spear­head­ing the cam­paign—Add All Three, which con­tin­ues to ag­i­tate for the amend­ment of the EOA to in­clude sex­u­al ori­en­ta­tion.