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SOURCE: (AP) – The Eastern Caribbean Supreme Court struck down a colonial-era law in St. Lucia that criminalized gay sex in a ruling Tuesday celebrated by activists in the largely conservative region.
The court found that the island’s so-called buggery and gross indecency laws were unconstitutional.
Raise Your Voice St. Lucia, a nonprofit organization, called it a “monumental step for human rights in the Eastern Caribbean.”
“It comes as a beacon of hope amid recent setbacks, such as disappointments in St. Vincent and the Grenadines as well as Trinidad and Tobago, that have tested our region’s commitment to equality,” the group said.
St. Lucia’s colonial-era law penalized gay sex with up to 10 years in prison. While the government didn’t enforce the law, activists and legal experts say it remained a threat to the island’s LGBTQ+ community.
“The mere existence of this provision is itself a violation of human rights and underpins further acts of discrimination,” according to Human Dignity Trust, a U.K.-based legal organization that helped work on the case.
In 2019, the Eastern Caribbean Alliance for Diversity and Equality filed five legal challenges against such laws in Antigua and Barbuda, Barbados, Grenada, Saint Kitts and Nevis, and Saint Lucia.
In 2022, courts in Barbados, Antigua and Barbuda, and Saint Kitts and Nevis struck down those laws.
Last year, a court in Dominica did the same.
“Today’s ruling is not just a win in the courts, it also represents a step towards justice for the many lives lost to violence simply for being themselves,” said Kenita Placide, the alliance’s executive director. “It signals that our Caribbean can and must be a place where all people are free and equal under the law.”
Only five Caribbean nations still penalize gay sex: Jamaica, Grenada, Guyana, St. Vincent and the Grenadines, and Trinidad and Tobago, where an appeals court earlier this year overturned a ruling that decriminalized gay sex.
Members of the LGBTQ+ community have fled those islands following violent attacks.
The UNAIDS Caribbean office celebrated Tuesday’s ruling, as did J’Moul Francis, foreign affairs minister for Antigua and Barbuda.
“Human rights in the Eastern Caribbean continue to advance as the colonial legacies of these unconstitutional provisions continue to fall,” he wrote on X. “However, more still needs to be done across the region to ensure that progress is real, practical, and effective for LGBTQ+ individuals.”
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Heaven’s Courtroom is the real and final Courtroom!
Judgment Day is coming. That’s a promise, not a threat.
Everyone should feel free to live the life they want! That being said, I understand that people don’t all believe or practice the same things. What I have an issue with, is persons wanting to flaunt their homosexual behaviour in front of other people expecting them to accept, like or condone it. Intimacy is supposed to be what its name infers! Intimate! Private! Keep your sexual practices and PDA’s private and we would have less inclusivity issues. People who are trying to become something else other than what they were biologically born or meant to be, need to learn how to behave like the species they are identifying with and not flaunt a garish and explicit interpretation to the world because it is offensive to those actually born with and accepting of their own biological existence! I am male and proud to be it or I am female and proud to be!!! Why go overboard with the gay or lesbian behaviour? Be confident in who you are but for crying out loud, tone down the behaviour! It’s just fluff and pretense rather than truth!
Shameful absolutely Shameful
I like how people crying shameful and disgrace…
These are the same men whose cars are parked up in the bushes with the young boys.
These are the same people whose cars are parked up committing adultery
Stop throwing stones. You all live in glass houses too and we all love to throw stones
GUD FU DEM…BUT NOBODY’S JUDGE DICTATES MY CONSCIENCE. YES I SAID IT! 🤔🤔🤔
Lord, come for your world!