In a landmark judgement, yesterday the Barbados High Court issued an oral ruling that decriminalized consensual same-sex relations. The written judgement will be handed down at a later date.
Barbados becomes the third Eastern Caribbean country in 2022 to strike down discriminatory legal provisions and decriminalize gay sex, after Antigua and Barbuda and Saint Kitts and Nevis.
Barbados’ Sexual Offences Act of 1992 sanctioned “buggery” with up to life imprisonment, and “serious indecency” with up to 10 years’ imprisonment. Both crimes were understood to criminalize consensual same-sex conduct and were relics of British colonial law.
While laws criminalizing same-sex intimacy in the Caribbean are rarely enforced, they are broad in scope, vaguely worded, and serve to legitimize bias and hostility toward lesbian, gay, bisexual and transgender (LGBT) people. A 2018 Human Rights Watch report documented discrimination, violence, and prejudice against LGBT people in seven island nations in the Eastern Caribbean, including Barbados, that criminalized gay sex.
The Barbados ruling is a result of local and regional civil society efforts to challenge anti-LGBT legislation in the Eastern Caribbean region, spearheaded in part by the group Eastern Caribbean Alliance for Diversity and Equality (ECADE).
In the Anglophone Caribbean, the Belize Supreme Court in 2016 became the first to hold that laws criminalizing same-sex intimacy were unconstitutional. Trinidad and Tobago’s High Court followed suit in 2018.
However, six countries in the Caribbean still have versions of “buggery” and “serious indecency” laws on the books: Dominica, Grenada, Guyana, Jamaica, Saint Lucia, and Saint Vincent and the Grenadines – outliers in the Western Hemisphere, where most countries have decriminalized same-sex conduct. At least 66 countries in the world still criminalize gay sex.
In a December 2020 decision, the Inter-American Commission on Human Rights called on Jamaica to repeal laws banning gay sex. The Organization of American States has also urged all countries to “prevent, punish, and eradicate” discrimination based on sexual orientation and gender identity.
Criminalizing same-sex intimacy violates international norms and standards, including the human rights to privacy and to be protected against arbitrary and unlawful interference with, or attacks on, one’s private and family life and one’s reputation or dignity. The UN independent expert on Sexual Orientation and Gender Identity has elaborated on this.
The Barbados court did the right thing. Now it is time for other governments to respect people’s right to privacy and strike down discriminatory intimacy laws.
