By: Staff Writer
September 9, 2022
A lawyer that worked on having the St Kitts and Nevis (SKN) anti-buggery laws struck down last month says that there is a long way to go towards ending discrimination in the country and around the region when it comes to the LGBT community.
Nadia Chiesa, partner at WeirFoulds LLP, Toronto, told Caribbean Magazine Plus that after successfully having struck down SKN’s anti-buggery laws last month that this is “just the first step” and: “There’s still a long way to go.”
She continued, “Striking laws off the books will not change, immediately the discrimination that exists, the societal stigma that may exist, but this is a critical first step towards ensuring all persons in St. Kitts and Nevis can enjoy their constitutional rights”
The suit was brought by Jamal Jeffers, a gay man in SKN, and a non-profit organisation called Saint Kitts and Nevis Alliance for Equality.
The Eastern Caribbean Supreme Court ruled against two portions of the Offences Against the Person Act, adopted in the dual-island nation in 1873, which called for up to ten years imprisonment for having or attempting to have gay sex.
SKN joins The Bahamas, Trinidad and Tobago, Belize and Antigua and Barbuda in decriminalizing homosexuals acts in the privacy of one’s home. A move that is another step away from old colonial laws handed down to the Commonwealth Caribbean from the United Kingdom.
Ms Chiesa also said: “One of the many issues with the buggery laws is that they applied to both private consensual acts and acts that were in public or acts that were non-consensual. So, it effectively meant the government and the police could be in your bedroom.
“By striking down these laws, it now means that same sex intimacy in private and between consenting adults is no longer a crime. So it effectively means that in the privacy of one’s home, it’s not a crime to express oneself through same sex intimacy.”
Ms Chiesa, who also was a part of the legal team that helped to have the Antigua and Barbuda anti-buggery laws struck down in July of this year, also said: “In St Kitts, it’s a monumental landmark decision for human rights in the region, to strike down these laws that have their colonial legacy.
“They were imposed through the British laws and have remained on the books until now in 2022, when the court has come out very strongly to show and to say that the human rights of all people in the Federation are equally important and all persons have the right to constitutional protection, regardless of who they are and who they love.”
Buggery laws remain on the books in a number of Caribbean nations including Jamaica and Barbados. Though they are rarely enforced, gay rights activists say that eliminating them would help ease pervasive homophobia.
Ms Chiesa also said the next step now for the gay right movement in the Caribbean “in keeping with the litigation,” is that the community organisations on the ground need to decide more conclusively how much more they want to dig into the LGBT issues in the Caribbean.
