Chief Jus­tice Ivor Archie is re­mind­ing lawyers and judges to re­main fair and nev­er dis­crim­i­nate when it comes to sex­u­al­i­ty or the health of peo­ple.

Speak­ing at the Caribbean Judges’ Fo­rum on HIV Health and Hu­man Rights held at The BRIX, Au­to­graph Col­lec­tion ho­tel yes­ter­day, Archie said not all dif­fer­ences should be la­belled as de­viances.

He al­so re­mind­ed those in at­ten­dance that Trinidad and To­ba­go is not a theoc­ra­cy but rather a sec­u­lar democ­ra­cy.

“As lawyers and judges, we must be­gin from the premise that it is pos­si­ble to con­struct func­tion­al, moral or eth­i­cal codes of be­hav­iour with­out ad­her­ence to any par­tic­u­lar doc­trine re­gard­less of how strong­ly we may hold our per­son­al re­li­gious con­vic­tions. That is the on­ly way di­ver­si­ty can be ac­com­mo­dat­ed in a plu­ral­is­tic so­ci­ety and that is the on­ly way we can dis­charge our du­ty of judg­ing with­out fear, favour, af­fec­tion or ill-will,” said the Chief Jus­tice.

Archie added there is a need for ac­cep­tance. He ques­tioned the ten­den­cy to view the law through re­li­gious eyes and the rush to judge­ment.

“Tol­er­ance is a word that I have a prob­lem with some­times be­cause I pre­fer ac­cep­tance. Most of our con­sti­tu­tions con­tain pre­am­bu­la­to­ry state­ments ac­knowl­edg­ing the su­prema­cy of God, the dig­ni­ty of the hu­man per­son and re­spect for fun­da­men­tal rights and free­doms. Un­for­tu­nate­ly, from my point of view, there is a ten­den­cy for some per­sons to in­ter­pret the law through a the­o­log­i­cal lens there­by con­flat­ing their per­son­al moral codes with the no­tions of dig­ni­ty and the am­bit of in­di­vid­ual rights and free­doms.

“For those who are straight, cis-gen­dered or oth­er­wise con­form­ing it is dif­fi­cult to per­ceive any con­cep­tu­al ten­sion be­tween these es­poused prin­ci­ples but de­spite the per­sua­sive in­flu­ence of re­li­gion in our so­ci­ety, our con­sti­tu­tion­al con­struct is that of a sec­u­lar democ­ra­cy. We are not a theoc­ra­cy. Not all dif­fer­ences should be la­belled as de­viance,” he added.

The fifth an­nu­al Caribbean Judges’ fo­rum was aimed at gath­er­ing re­gion­al and in­ter­na­tion­al ex­perts to en­gage in dis­cus­sions re­gard­ing the rights of peo­ple with HIV, men who have sex with men, trans­gen­der and sex work­ers.

It is a two-day fo­rum that is sched­uled to con­clude to­day.