Dear Readers:
As nations develop, it sometimes becomes necessary to remove irrelevant legislation, especially if it hinders the nation’s development. Prior to removing such legislation, it is prudent to understand why the law was passed in the first place, and what behaviour it was intended to restrain.
At the recently held second National Consultation on HIV/AIDS, some assertions were made to justify a recommendation to government to decriminalize homosexuality and prostitution in Barbados. Some Ministers of Government seem to have readily accepted these assertions and have stated their intention to hastily implement the recommendations. Today, we shall examine some of these assertions.
The first and most popular assertion is that the law is discriminatory and there is no more room in Barbados for laws that discriminate against people. Our criminal laws do not discriminate against a set of people, but they do discriminate against unacceptable behaviours, and by extension, any person who commits such offences. It is misleading therefore to attempt to associate the discrimination of unacceptable behaviour with our collective consciousness of colonial slavery and post slavery legislation, which discriminated against people.
The second assertion is that condoms must be distributed to prisoners in order to control the spread of HIV/AIDS at the prison, and government cannot be seen to sanction an illegal act, therefore homosexual behaviour must be made legal. Rape is reportedly one of the major methods of HIV/AIDS transmission among prisoners. The government can therefore find itself in a similar dilemma of being seen to sanction another illegal act. Also, there is no basis to assume that rapists in prison will consider using a condom when rapists outside of the prison do not. It also seems highly unlikely that a rapist can effectively install a condom while struggling to restrain his victim.
The third major assertion is that we live in a pluralistic society and the rights of every citizen must be respected. This is essentially an academic argument that should not be used outside of the university. Simply put, it is asserted that homosexuals have a right to engage in homosexual acts, which presupposes that there are persons innately predisposed to homosexuality.
To understand this academic argument, it is necessary to examine it with an equal academic argument. Both theft and buggery are against the laws of Barbados. However, it can be argued that the law discriminates against thieves and homosexuals by making their behaviour illegal. This argument can be strengthened if it can be shown that the thief and the homosexual exhibit innate behaviour that they have no control over, rather than learned behaviour that can be corrected.
There is some evidence to support the argument that theft may be innate. Infants are not taught to steal, yet they regularly take things that do not belong to them, and psychologists have well documented cases of adult kleptomaniacs who cannot control their behaviour of stealing. However, despite those cases, the evidence that stealing is a learnt behaviour is overwhelming. Should theft therefore be decriminalised, or made legal only for those who may be predisposed to stealing?
In the realm of academia, the conclusions to debates like these are inconsequential. However, it shows why such debates should not be allowed to influence the government of a nation. There is currently an academic debate in North America and Europe on whether homosexual behaviour is learned or innate. Research into whether it is innate is in its embryonic stages and has so far yielded inconclusive results. However, the evidence that it is learnt is overwhelming, and the link between homosexual behaviour and paedophilia, or the rape of children, is strong.
The homosexual act of buggery has been considered so dangerous to Barbados’ development that the offence carried, and still carries a penalty of life imprisonment. There is a strong link between homosexuality and paedophilia, and some homosexual groups in North America and Europe boldly proclaim that link as intentional. The Government is therefore ill advised to unleash the horrors that previous generations of Barbadian legislators have secured for us in a proverbial ‘Pandora’s box’.
Barbados has reached a very dangerous stage in its development as an independent nation. A small lobby group promoting immoral behaviour can now influence a national organisation to make illogical recommendations that not only go unchallenged by Government, but which are instead inexplicably embraced. The dangers are compounded when a Government can stifle effective debate by hastily forcing an unpopular legislative change that will not facilitate Barbados’ development, but which has the potential to unleash a horror that can destroy our nation from within.
