Submission 45

Sent: Tuesday, November 8, 2022
To: ConstitutionalReform
Subject: LGBT and Minority Rights In The Constitution

Unfortunately I was unable to attend any of the three public meetings this Commission has hosted thus far. However I was able to watch several clips of the meeting online, and I must say much of what I heard and saw was disappointing but not surprising. At the recent meeting held at Deighton Griffoth, many members of the public espoused views that were harmful to the LGBT community, ignorant, homophobic, and frankly ungrounded in reality. Examples include the conflation of homosexuality, bisexuality, and other sexualities with crimes such as paedophilia or bestiality. Many people use a slippery slope argument, arguing that if we allow consenting adults to engage in same sex sexual actvities, that will somehow lead to the moral destruction of our beloved Barbados. This is a lie. Others will try to argue that allowing gay people to marry would be Barbados succumbing to western pressure and goes against the traditons of our ancestors, as if many of these traditions and relions were not forced upon our ancestors by their enslavers. Many cultures around the world had special places in their societies for queer and intersex people(the Hawaiian Mahu, Samoan fa'afafine, Indian Hijras are three examples. There were also numerous gay and lesbian kings through Sub-Saharan Africa) until European colonizers came and destroyed their ways of life. If we as a society truly wish to cast off the lastvestiges of colonialism, we must do it fully and free ourselves from the colonial influence of homophobia.

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