Last week’s ob­ser­vance of In­ter­na­tion­al Day Against Ho­mo­pho­bia, Bi­pho­bia and Trans­pho­bia (IDA­HO­BIT) fo­cused specif­i­cal­ly on the threat that a lack of ac­tion on dis­crim­i­na­tion against mem­bers of the LGBT+ com­mu­ni­ty can pro­duce the aw­ful im­pact of leav­ing some of our cit­i­zens be­hind.

“No One to be Left Be­hind” was the adopt­ed slo­gan against a back­drop of “Free­dom and Jus­tice for All”.

Those of us who sub­scribe to the view that ob­ser­vance of hu­man rights re­quires recog­ni­tion of their uni­ver­sal na­ture—mean­ing that all hu­man rights are for every­one—find easy res­o­nance be­tween such a con­vic­tion and last week’s themes and sub-themes.

There is al­so the ques­tion of rights be­ing in­di­vis­i­ble and in­alien­able, mean­ing that they can­not be sub­di­vid­ed for con­ve­nience, and no one or no cir­cum­stance should ever be ca­pa­ble of tak­ing them away.

The al­ter­na­tive, among oth­er things, is the re­al­i­ty of of­fi­cial­ly sanc­tioned prej­u­dice and dis­crim­i­na­tion and the ha­tred that ei­ther fu­els much of it or emerges from it.

On an­oth­er bat­tle­front, for ex­am­ple, we have not­ed the de­gree to which re­duc­ing new mi­grant pop­u­la­tions to car­i­ca­ture, lin­guis­tic mock­ery, and neg­a­tive stereo­typ­ing has stim­u­lat­ed per­va­sive prej­u­dice, con­tempt, and en­su­ing hate.

The “close de bor­ders” crowd re­mon­strat­ing an­gri­ly as Venezue­lan men, women, and chil­dren lined up for “pro­cess­ing” in June 2019 in the rain were act­ing based on feel­ings of ill-will with the in­ten­tion of see­ing the an­i­mos­i­ty grow. I am yet to be con­vinced oth­er­wise.

Since then, we have had to di­gest the fact that ba­bies and chil­dren were kept be­hind bars, school-age chil­dren have been de­nied the right to an ed­u­ca­tion, and breach­es of our coun­try’s labour leg­is­la­tion have been rou­tinized when it comes to mi­grants. These are not acts that pro­ceed out of love. 

Mean­while, an al­liance has al­so been es­tab­lished to ad­dress is­sues as­so­ci­at­ed with age and health con­di­tion/sta­tus when it comes to our Equal­i­ty Op­por­tu­ni­ty Act.

The Add All Three cam­paign, led by the Coali­tion Ad­vo­cat­ing for In­clu­sion of Sex­u­al Ori­en­ta­tion (CAISO), fo­cus­es on these two omis­sions to­geth­er with the leg­is­lat­ed de­prav­i­ty of our EOC when it comes to the LGBT+ com­mu­ni­ty.

How­ev­er po­lite the re­sis­tance to change on the lat­ter sub­ject, in the main root­ed in sup­pos­ed­ly benev­o­lent in­ten­tions, harm is an in­evitable out­come once em­ploy­ment, hous­ing, ed­u­ca­tion, and oth­er op­por­tu­ni­ties are de­cid­ed­ly ren­dered out of the reach of some with­out of­fence to a law de­signed to guard against dis­crim­i­na­tion.

I am aware of the le­gal work once done to cor­rect the LGBT+ anom­aly re­flect­ed in the ex­plic­it ex­clu­sion of “sex­u­al ori­en­ta­tion” (not that this is even a cor­rect for­mu­la­tion) as a ba­sis for chal­leng­ing de­pri­va­tion of em­ploy­ment, ed­u­ca­tion­al, and oth­er so­cio-eco­nom­ic op­por­tu­ni­ty.

Such re­form was ac­tu­al­ly ini­ti­at­ed from with­in the Equal Op­por­tu­ni­ty Com­mis­sion by peo­ple who are no longer there. The cur­rent oc­cu­pants of the of­fice need to re­sume the strug­gle.

It is nev­er­the­less true that in­ter­na­tion­al con­ven­tions, to which we are will­ing­ly and boast­ful­ly sub­scribed, al­ready point in rec­om­mend­ed di­rec­tions in all ar­eas men­tioned here, but the force of do­mes­tic law/pro­tec­tions is clear­ly nec­es­sary un­der cur­rent cir­cum­stances.

Why has this not been placed on the par­lia­men­tary agen­da? Why is there not a stronger groundswell of po­lit­i­cal pres­sure to rec­ti­fy this? Are we go­ing to wit­ness the ap­pear­ance of these is­sues in forth­com­ing po­lit­i­cal man­i­festoes?

Last week, while speak­ing about this on IDA­HO­BIT at a British High Com­mis­sion func­tion, I al­so won­dered aloud why a greater num­ber of us in T&T are not em­bar­rassed by the spe­cif­ic trav­es­ty re­gard­ing “sex­u­al ori­en­ta­tion” in our EOA.

Put in plain lan­guage, we have a law that promis­es to ad­dress the is­sue of equal­i­ty of eco­nom­ic and oth­er op­por­tu­ni­ties for the cit­i­zen­ry but very point­ed­ly ex­cludes some. The framers of the law did not even care to en­gage in pas­sive omis­sion, as has been the case with age and dis­crim­i­na­tion based on health sta­tus.

While that is be­ing cor­rect­ed, and as we pay at­ten­tion to Add All Three and rec­ti­fy our clum­si­ness over the rights of new mi­grants, we must ac­knowl­edge that we are of­fer­ing equal op­por­tu­ni­ty to some and not to all.

Is this how we wish to pro­ceed? Should we fear the an­swer to this ques­tion?