Groups want end to colonial era buggery laws

GEORGETOWN (CMC):

The Society Against Sexual Orientation Discrimination (SASOD) Wednesday launched a campaign to increase public tolerance of gays as well to convince both government and opposition to amend legislation that violates the human rights of its members.

SASOD’s general manager and founder, Joel Simpson, says the next phase, to be achieved over the next two years, is to have these laws criminalised and then repealed. This as the significant impact the “Guyana Together” campaign will have public education and the roll-on effect of people pressuring the legislature, ordinary legislators.

The campaign has so far been endorsed by 63 organisations and businesses, including the Black Entrepreneurs Association, Georgetown Chamber of Commerce and Industry, Guyana Presbyterian Church and Help and Shelter.

Simpson said Sections 351 to 353 of the Criminal Law (Offences) Act Chapter 8:01 criminalise intimacy between consenting, adult men in private by regarding those acts as gross indecency, attempted buggery” and buggery.

He said that a poll conducted last year found that 54 per cent, or more than half of Guyana’s population, supported repealing laws that criminalise intimacy between consenting men in private.

The survey found that acceptance had grown from 19 per cent to 34.5 per cent with a significant number of Guyanese indicating that they would accept lesbian gay, bisexual and transgender (LBGT) people in their lives.

The launch of the campaign was attended by senior representatives of the United States, British, Canadian and the European Union. These countries have at various times called for legislative reforms to end discrimination against LGBTQI persons.