Uncompromising JEA blast bid to legitimise buggery

WESTERN BUREAU:

Gay rights activists, who have launched a fresh campaign to get the Government to repeal Jamaica’s contentious buggery law, can expect a solid pushback from the Jamaica Evangelical Alliance (JEA), who are holding firm in their resistance to any such move.

JEA’s president Dr Alvin Bailey, who was addressing Sunday’s official launch of the organisation’s St James chapter at the Catherine Hall Holiness Christian Church in Montego Bay, said the group is also maintaining its resolute stance against abortion and corruption.

“We know, as a fact, that it is ... the opening of the door for the LGBT and all other entities that subscribe to the deviant actions of this organisation. They will talk about legalisation of homosexuality and then they’re talking about marriage of gay persons,” said Bailey.

He cited the decision by outspoken gay rights activist Maurice Tomlinson to take Jamaica’s attorney general to court to repeal the buggery law as having larger implications.

“They will seek to promote it in our society and everything else that they advance in the LGBT that are against Bible and scriptures. Homosexuality is a sin, the Bible pronounces it as a sin and speaks of it as an abomination,” said the defiant Bailey.

Homosexuality is traditionally frowned on in Jamaica, especially among persons who espouse conservative religious and cultural values. A recent RJRGLEANER-commissioned Don Anderson poll revealed that four out of every five Jamaicans want buggery to remain a criminal offence while 12 per cent believe it should be decriminalised.

Tomlinson has been advocating for a repeal of Jamaica’s anti-sodomy law in the Jamaican court since 2015. The gay rights activist, who is an attorney-at-law, recently told The Gleaner that the substantive case has not yet been tried due to what he describes as an orchestrated plot to delay it.

Last December, the Barbados High Court decriminalised consensual same-sex relations. The landmark ruling struck down sections of the Sexual Offences Act, including those related to buggery and serious indecency by declaring void Sections 9 and 12, Chapter 154, of the Sexual Offences Act.

Under Section 9 of the Sexual Offences Act, men convicted of engaging in same-sex sexual activity could be sentenced to life imprisonment, while under Section 12, both men and women faced up to 10 years’ imprisonment, according to media reports.

Barbados became the third Eastern Caribbean country in 2022 to repeal such legislation, joining Antigua and Barbuda, and Saint Kitts and Nevis. The Reverend Glendon Powell, chairman of the St James chapter of the JEA, says the LGBT community wants to redefine the world as it relates to religious, cultural, and societal norms.

“They want to confuse people. They want to say that a man should not be called a man you know. They want to say that two men or two women can be legally married, but the Bible tells us that marriage is male and female,” Powell said.

“Marriage is the institution of God, and it must be respected as the institution of God. He has not changed his law concerning the institution and we have absolutely no right to change it,” added Powell.

In defiance of any backlash from the gay community, Bailey said the JEA is not afraid and will continue to stand up against homosexuality, abortion, and corruption.

“We must speak squarely against homosexuality and against every act of sin and deviance. So, the same extent to which we speak up against homosexuality, we speak out against adultery, fornication, murder, and corruption,” said Bailey.