EDITORIAL - The State as voyeur

It remains this newspaper's position that the laws in Jamaica, and elsewhere in the Caribbean, that criminalise male homosexuality - and anal intercourse generally - are anachronisms that legitimise voyeurism by the State, undermine human dignity, and breach people's rights to privacy and freedom from discrimination.

In that regard, we reiterate our support for Prime Minister Portia Simpson Miller's pre-election declaration that the sexual orientation of the people who would serve in a government she leads would be of no moment to her and, therefore, not part of the criteria she applied in choosing a Cabinet.

Indeed, Mrs Simpson Miller had promised that, in Government, she would allow a conscience vote in Parliament on the repeal of the laws, meaning that the whip would attempt to exert no influence on the decision of People's National Party legislators. We believe that Mrs Simpson Miller must go further.

She should, in the lead-up to that vote, use her considerable skills in communicating with the mass of Jamaica's citizens to open a measured conversation, in which she elaborates on the positions she so clearly articulated in that campaign debate with the Jamaica Labour Party's Andrew Holness.

MODERN HUMAN RIGHTS

Mrs Simpson Miller's larger message, then, was that Jamaica, or any country, could not afford to sideline the talent and skills or any of its citizens in the cause of national development, whether via public bureaucracy or elsewhere in the economy. But this issue transcends utilitarian concerns, to modern concepts of human rights and the relationship between the State and its citizens.

It can't be of any practical value to the State to subvert the privacy of people's bedrooms, to divine the sexual behaviour of consenting adults - heterosexual couples included - to determine whether they have breached a law relevant to another time. Such laws, by their existence, assault the dignity of the people they target and, in the process, discriminate against adult citizens who, by mutual consent, engage in the kind of sex of which the moral police disapprove.

To this Prime Minister Simpson Miller has already said no. She must now go all the way.

The opinions on this page, except for the above, do not necessarily reflect the views of The Gleaner. To respond to a Gleaner editorial, email us: editor@gleanerjm.com or fax: 922-6223. Responses should be no longer than 400 words. Not all responses will be published.