On Mon­day evening in the Sen­ate, an op­por­tu­ni­ty was missed to deal with an area in which cit­i­zens of this coun­try face dis­crim­i­na­tion based on their sex­u­al pref­er­ences.

Amend­ments are be­ing made to the Do­mes­tic Vi­o­lence (Amend­ment) Act that widen the scope of pro­tec­tion or­ders and ad­dress the use of tech­nol­o­gy by abusers to ha­rass and stalk their vic­tims.

These are the first changes to the leg­is­la­tion in 21 years, cre­at­ing a stronger law which should get unan­i­mous sup­port from all sides in the cham­ber. That is, ex­cept for that glar­ing loop­hole which leaves same-sex cou­ples de­prived of the pro­tec­tions pro­vid­ed by the law.

In­de­pen­dent Sen­a­tor Hazel Thomp­son-Ahye, an at­tor­ney who is wide­ly re­spect­ed for her work in fam­i­ly law, ex­pressed con­cern about that over­sight when she made her con­tri­bu­tion to de­bate in the Up­per House and at the com­mit­tee stage of the bill moved for an amend­ment to ad­dress that de­fi­cien­cy in clause 3 of the leg­is­la­tion.

Re­gret­tably, the amend­ment got very lit­tle sup­port and was not part of the bill that was even­tu­al­ly passed by the Sen­ate late on Mon­day.

The un­for­tu­nate mes­sage be­ing telegraphed through that de­ci­sion is that mem­bers of the T&T LGBT com­mu­ni­ty are not en­ti­tled to the same lev­el of pro­tec­tion as het­ero­sex­u­al cit­i­zens when they are abused by their in­ti­mate part­ners. They will not be able to ap­ply for pro­tec­tion or­ders un­der the amend­ed Do­mes­tic Vi­o­lence law.

The bill, which will be de­bat­ed in the House of Rep­re­sen­ta­tives to­day, cov­ers 13 types of re­la­tion­ships, in­clud­ing chil­dren, those over the age of 16 and cou­ples in ro­man­tic and sex­u­al re­la­tion­ships. It al­so in­cludes a more ex­pan­sive de­f­i­n­i­tion of emo­tion­al and psy­cho­log­i­cal abus­es.

At­tor­ney Gen­er­al Faris Al-Rawi, who pi­lot­ed the bill through the Sen­ate and will do the same in the Low­er House this af­ter­noon, needs to ex­plain why an en­tire seg­ment of the pop­u­la­tion has not been brought un­der the am­bit of this law.

It is dif­fi­cult to fath­om why, in 21st-cen­tu­ry T&T, a cit­i­zen with a par­tic­u­lar sex­u­al pref­er­ence is not be able to se­cure an emer­gency pro­tec­tion or­der against their part­ner of the same sex. In a coun­try where do­mes­tic vi­o­lence is a ma­jor prob­lem, these cit­i­zens re­main ex­posed to phys­i­cal and emo­tion­al harm by their abu­sive part­ners.

For this fail­ure, the Gov­ern­ment, Op­po­si­tion and quite a few mem­bers of the Sen­ate’s In­de­pen­dent bench­es share equal blame.

This gi­ant step back­wards, just over two years af­ter the land­mark April 2018 High Court rul­ing that de­clared the coun­try’s bug­gery law un­con­sti­tu­tion­al, shows how much work still needs to be done at all lev­els of this so­ci­ety to erad­i­cate dis­crim­i­na­tion in all its ug­ly forms.

A ma­jor in­fringe­ment on the rights of LGBT cit­i­zens was struck down in that his­toric judge­ment de­liv­ered by Jus­tice Devin­dra Ram­per­sad, which re­pealed sec­tions 13 and 16 of the Sex­u­al Of­fens­es Act.

On that oc­ca­sion, the law vi­o­lat­ed hu­man rights to pri­va­cy and ex­pres­sion. This week, how­ev­er, the right to pro­tec­tion from abuse was de­nied to LGBT cit­i­zens and the op­por­tu­ni­ty was missed to in­tro­duce a strong, pro­gres­sive law.