Jamaica’s Minister of Justice has hinted that anti-discrimination legislation protecting the LGBT community may be coming to the Caribbean nation.
Without citing gays and lesbians by name, Mark Goolding said in an interview with RJR News that such measures were needed for minorities who can’t turn currently to the judiciary for redress. “I don’t think the courts under the present configuration are the mechanism by which persons will be vindicated,” said Golding. “I think it will require some legislative intervention.”
His statement came efter the release on Thursday of a report from the Inter-American Commission on Human Rights that addressed human-rights violations against LGBTs Jamaicans and other groups.
Currently, the Civil Service Staff Orders of 2004 only protect Jamaican civil servants from discrimination on the grounds of sexual orientation.
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Any such measure wouldn’t repeal Jamaica’s buggery laws, though, which can impose a prison sentence of up to ten years for male same-sex activity.
jwrappaport
Jamaica has a Minister of Justice? That seems very sadly oxymoronic. I’m curious as to what specific acts of discrimination will be proscribed by the new law. I’m also baffled that a sane legislature is worried about everyday discrimination while it continues to empower its executive and judicial departments to imprison a gay man for a decade for having consensual sex with his adult partner.
Samuel
They still have anti sodomy laws!!! I used to think on their society below was sick; turns out its top to bottom…
David
@Samuel: America had Anti-Sodomy laws until 2004… So they’re not much behind the world’s “shining example of Democracy”