Unbiased look at the Sint Maarten Elections
BRIDGETOWN, Barbados--A Barbadian Cabinet Minister is prepared to personally campaign to churches and members of his constituency to fight the introduction of gender-neutral legislation on domestic violence.
Speaking to a Democratic Labour Party (DLP) Christ Church East branch meeting last Sunday, Minister of Environment and Drainage Dr. Denis Lowe went as far as to threaten to resign his post, rather than sign any legislation which appeared to recognise same-sex couples.
The Minister's reaction follows a resolution for the reform of Barbados' domestic violence laws, which was circulated by opposition Senator Wilfred Abrahams to the Barbados Labour Party (BLP) annual conference. The resolution, which omits gendered definitions of the parties that could constitute a relationship, would effectively extend protection to same-sex couples.
Barbados' existing and limited legislation on intimate partner violence – the 1992 Domestic Violence Act – provides only for the grant of protection orders in instances of domestic abuse, and only considers such abuse in the context of marriage between a "husband and wife."
The Abrahams resolution reportedly introduced language to define a "partner" as "any person in a visiting relationship" and "spouse" as a "party to the relationship where the parties are living with each other in the same household, as though they were husband and wife." And while Abrahams has lauded the proposed bill as a "socially revolutionary piece of legislation," he faces intense opposition not only from the incumbent government MP, but within his own party as well.
The implied recognition of same-sex relationships appears to be politically inconvenient for both major political camps.
Senior members of the opposition BLP were reported to express their dissatisfaction with the proposed bill, while members of the party's Christ Church East executive branch have lodged a formal complaint, indicating that they had no knowledge of the resolution or its contents before it was presented to the party conference.
"[This – Ed.] deeply offends the branch procedurally as well as, by implication, suggests the branch's acquiescence and/or support of any formal legislative recognition of non-heterosexual relationships at this time, and where there has been no engagement or discussion on the matter," said a BLP Christ Church East branch executive.
Meanwhile, for the incumbent MP, the implication that public policy should be nuanced by religious considerations has been made clear: "I am a man of the Bible, a person of faith," said Lowe, stating that the legislation "runs against the grain of what I have always known to be the biblical way."
Lowe further threatened to circulate briefs on the proposed legislation to every church and religious leader on the island, to ascertain whether they were prepared to "encourage" the tenets of the legislation in their churches.
Despite the MP's assertions, gender-neutrality in the context of the proposed bill is not an endorsement of same-sex unions. The Abrahams-supported resolution, by virtue of its elimination of gender-specific definitions, does not legally recognise marriage or partnerships between persons of the same sex. Abrahams says the legislation seeks only to "widen the ambit of who actually is a victim."
Popular opinion on homosexuality in Barbados, according to a recent poll by the Caribbean Development Research Services Inc. CADRES, has shifted positively over the course of the last decade, with levels of acceptance rising 11 percentage points since 2004, with over half (67 per cent) of the Barbadian population self-describing as "tolerant" or "accepting" of homosexuals. ~ Caribbean360 ~
