A member of the legal fraternity has warned that making rape gender neutral will weaken the country’s buggery law and erode the foundation for marriage as outlined in the Bible.
Attorney-at-law, Shirley Richards said the private member’s motion brought by Member of Parliament for South East St Ann, Lisa Hanna recently in parliament to alter the definition of rape, has grave implications.
“It is in the interest of the state to preserve the knowledge as to what constitutes sexual intercourse,” said Richards, who is a member of the Lawyers’ Christian Fellowship and the Jamaica Coalition for a Healthy Society.
According to Hanna, in our Sexual Offences Act, sexual intercourse is defined as the entrance of the penis to the vagina only.She expressed concern that under the law in Jamaica, a man cannot say that he has been raped.
But Richards noted that the Sexual Offences Act 2009, points to several different types of sexual offences. She said changing the definition of sexual intercourse to include sexual penetration of the anus will undermine the country’s buggery law.
“I think this motion was raised with the knowledge, as to what the full implications are when we do that,” Richards said during an interview on TBC Radio morning programme, Conversations, on Monday.
Richards said that while the buggery law was passed in the colonial era, it has proven to be good for our country. Without the buggery law, she said anal sex would lose its status as being unnatural. If that view is shifted, then Jamaican’s freedom of speech and freedom to preach the gospel will eventually be affected.
The attorney said anal sex is unnatural, whether it is being done by persons of the same sex or whether it is a man engaging in this form of sexual activity with a woman.
Attempts to overturn Jamaica’s buggery law has intensified in recent years, as the global LGBTQ community seeks to normalise same sex relationships and marriages. Last year October, Jamaica’s Constitutional Court dismissed the challenge to the country’s buggery law by gay rights activist Maurice Tomlinson. A panel of three judges unanimously ruled that the savings law clause of the Constitution prevents it from enquiring into the section of the Offences Against the Person Act which prohibits buggery. The court said that changing the law against buggery is a matter for parliament.