Trinidad and Tobago pastor Bishop Victor Gill says Jamaica remains the final bastion against efforts by Satanic agents to overturn the region’s colonial buggery law. Bishop Gill’s comments came on the heels of Tuesday’s crushing ruling by the UK-based Privy Council decriminalising consensual sexual relationships between same-sex individuals in the twin island republic.
While disappointed with the ruling, Bishop Gill sees a glimmer of hope in Jamaica, which continues to put up a fierce fight despite a staunch campaign to get the country to bow to the gay agenda for the Caribbean.
“Jamaica has always done a good job resisting. They have been an example to us here in Trinidad, and I would want to believe that Jamaica will put up a very good [and] valiant fight,” said Bishop Gill, the senior pastor of Redemption Christian Centre in Trinidad.
“Jamaica will be a force to be reckoned with, and having said that, I want to encourage Jamaicans that they are the last bastions. How they respond can galvanise the whole of the Caribbean. So we will be praying for them and encouraging them to fight for all of us in this region,” Bishop Gill told the Freedom Come Rain newspsaper.
The Bahamas decriminalised homosexuality in 1991, while the UK repealed anti-buggery laws in Anguilla, the British Virgin Islands, the Cayman Islands, Montserrat and the Turks and Caicos Islands in 2001. Barbados, Dominica, St. Lucia and Antigua and Barbuda also struck down similar laws. Now Trinidad has joined that list.
Grenada, Jamaica, St. Vincent and the Grenadines now remain the only countries in the region with anti-sodomy laws. Legal challenges have been mounted against Jamaica, which has been branded the most homophobic country on earth by the international community.
In the 2023 report entitled, “A Caribbean Outlier: Repeal anti-LGBTQI+ laws in Jamaica” international organizations the Human Dignity Trust and Rainbow Railroad, lamented the fact that Jamaica has completely disregarded the February 2021 ruling by the the Inter-American Commission on Human Rights (IACHR) that the country immediately repeal the buggery law. It also made recommendations on how the government could improve the situation for LGBTQI+ people in Jamaica.
“To this day, Jamaica has failed to take any material action in response to the IACHR’s findings and the clear recommendations set out in its report, or to even acknowledge the urgency of this crucial issue. Even in the face of the wave of progress experienced by its Caribbean neighbours, Jamaica’s homophobic laws remain in force,” the LGBTQ advocacy organisations noted.
While a wind of legal change is blowing across the Caribbean, it has not had the desired impact on Jamaica, which they noted is fast becoming the outlier for the region.
“While Jamaica has resisted change, other Caribbean nations have made significant progress in dismantling their own homophobic laws and protecting their citizens. This position has isolated Jamaica as other Caribbean countries take steps to improve the rights of their L GBTQI+ populations,” the organisations stated.
Several attempts have been made to change the mindset of citizens in the predominantly Christian country, including identifying allies in the church, but all efforts have so far failed.