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Sunday, July 6, 2025

Activist going for full equality

by

2641 days ago
20180413

Gay rights ac­tivist Ja­son Jones be­lieves it will take be­tween three to four years for Jus­tice Devin­dra Ram­per­sad’s land­mark judge­ment on this coun­try’s ho­mo­pho­bic bug­gery laws to take full ef­fect.

In a in­ter­view out­side the Hall of Jus­tice mo­ments af­ter he scored the le­gal vic­to­ry over the con­sti­tu­tion­al­i­ty of the laws, Jones said he ex­pect­ed that Of­fice of the At­tor­ney Gen­er­al to take the case all the way to the coun­try’s fi­nal ap­pel­late court - the Unit­ed King­dom-based Privy Coun­cil.

“I knew go­ing in­to this that this would take about a decade of my life and I am com­mit­ted to see­ing it through to the end,” Jones, who holds dual cit­i­zen­ship be­tween T&T and the UK, said. De­scrib­ing Ram­per­sad’s judge­ment as stun­ning, Jones ex­pressed the hope that it would in­spire oth­er LGBTQI ac­tivists to con­tin­ue their strug­gle for equal­i­ty.

“I think it is a defin­ing mo­ment. I think we do need mo­ments like that where an in­di­vid­ual stands up and peo­ple can re­late to that. The right of the in­di­vid­ual can not be su­per­seded by the ma­jor­i­ty,” Jones said, as he not­ed gay mar­riage and adop­tion were still is­sues af­fect­ing the com­mu­ni­ty.

“I will not stop un­til I have full equal­i­ty. I am not go­ing to tol­er­ate sec­ond class cit­i­zen­ship any more.”

Jones said an­oth­er im­por­tant is­sue the com­mu­ni­ty need­ed to meet and strate­gise on is get­ting Par­lia­ment to amend the Equal Op­por­tu­ni­ties Act to in­clude dis­crim­i­na­tion against peo­ple based on sex­u­al ori­en­ta­tion. Asked whether he was af­fect­ed by protests from re­li­gious groups against his law­suit, in­clud­ing yes­ter­day, Jones said no.

“Every­body is en­ti­tled to their own opin­ion and their re­li­gious be­liefs and prac­tices, but we have to be cog­nizant of the fact that we are a mul­ti-cul­tur­al melt­ing pot of a na­tion,” he said. (DA)


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