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Could Marriage Equality Be Coming To Jamaica?

Leading Jamaican Newspaper Endorses Marriage Equality

“It is unassailable logic” that a ban on same-sex couples marrying “represents an assault on the principle of equality of people,” via the Jamaica Gleaner.

J. Lester Feder
June 5, 2014


One of Jamaica’s leading daily newspapers called for the elimination of the country’s ban on marriage equality and its law criminalizing sodomy in an editorial published Thursday.

The Jamaica Gleaner wrote that Section 28 of the country’s Charter of Fundamental Rights of Freedom, which defines marriage as a union between a man and a woman, “represents an assault on the principle of equality of people; people’s right to forge relationships … and their right to equal protection under the law. Indeed, a denial of these human rights is also an attack on the dignity of individuals who are prevented from the public expression of the powerful human emotion of love within the sanctity of marriage, although same-sex couples could well give the institution a shot in the arm.”

The editorial argued that Section 28 is “a provision that has its foundation in a deep-seated, if slowly receding, homophobia that has caused us to maintain the buggery provisions, which, essentially, criminalise male homosexuality and allows the State the role of commissar of sexual preferences and to invade the privacy of people’s bedrooms.”

The editorial comes as a case is pending before the country’s supreme court challenging the sodomy law, put in place by the United Kingdom when Jamaica was a British colony. Religious conservatives have mounted an intense campaign to keep the law in place, including bringing in anti-LGBT activists from the United States and Britain to bolster support for the provision. The island has also seen a rash of mob violence targeting people perceived to be LGBT, which has contributed to a problem of homelessness among LGBT youth.

Here is the full editorial from the Jamaica Gleaner,
“Same-Sex Unions And The Marriage Contract”:

Stripped to its core, marriage, in law, is a contract between two persons - in Jamaica’s case, a man and a woman - who agree, broadly, to pool their assets and, usually, live together.

Their motivation, mostly, is because they love each other and want to commit their lives together, or so they believe. This sometimes includes having children and raising a family.

But judging from the statistics, marriage is not a particularly popular institution in Jamaica, and is becoming increasingly so. For instance, according to the national census of 2011, nearly 70 per cent of Jamaicans over 16, the age at which people can legally marry, never did.

And those who marry are abrogating the contract at an increasingly faster rate. For example, in 2005, there were just under 26,000 marriages in the island and Jamaicans were tying the knot at the rate of 9.78 per 1,000 population. Five years later, the number of couples walking down the aisles had dropped by approximately 5,500, or 21 per cent.

At the same time, divorce was on the increase. At the middle of the last decade, there were around 1,800 divorces annually, or approximately seven divorces per 100 marriages. By 2010, the number of divorces had climbed by 31 per cent, or at a rate of 111/2 per 100 marriages. A not unexpected upshot of all this is that 80 per cent of Jamaica’s children are born out of wedlock and the bulk of them have no registered fathers on their birth certificates.

HYPOCRISY

We draw attention to these statistics neither to ridicule nor undermine marriage, for this newspaper appreciates its potential as an institution of social stability and respect its centrality to Christian and other religious ideologies. But by taking the marriage to its contractual core, it bares the persistence of hypocritical and anachronistic attitudes that perpetuate discrimination.

In Jamaica’s case, we refer to Section 28 of the Charter of Fundamental Rights and Freedoms, which defines marriage as a union between one man and one woman, thereby ruling out the possibility of formal recognition of same-sex relationships. It is a provision that has its foundation in a deep-seated, if slowly receding, homophobia that has caused us to maintain the buggery provisions, which, essentially, criminalise male homosexuality and allows the State the role of commissar of sexual preferences and to invade the privacy of people’s bedrooms. It matters nought that the power is little used; its existence is chilling.

INEQUALITY

Further, it is unassailable logic that Section 28 represents an assault on the principle of equality of people; people’s right to forge relationships, especially when the exercise of those rights does not impinge on the rights of others; and their right to equal protection under the law. Indeed, a denial of these human rights is also an attack on the dignity of individuals who are prevented from the public expression of the powerful human emotion of love within the sanctity of marriage, although same-sex couples could well give the institution a shot in the arm.

The religionists and churches who are not willing to embrace same-sex marriages, but who already co-exist in a morally plural society, need not fear that they may have to compromise their ideologies. While civil registers are not so precluded, ministers of religions who are marriage officers are exempt, at Section 8 of the Marriage Act, from performing weddings that are contrary to the rules of their denominations.

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This is an amazing development in America's island neighbor... Jamaica is well known as one the most homophobic nations on Earth.  Extreme violence, discrimination and oppression against GLBT people in Jamaica is well documented, but could this editorial represent a turning point?

"Fear Eats the Soul"