tidings
Melissa Doughty
Pride TT and other support groups took to the streets on Sunday as members of the LGBT+ community and allies celebrated five years of its pride parade.
Although the community has been celebrating pride (an event repeated globally) for over 30 years, it wasn’t until 2018 that the first pride parade was held.
Many people gathered at Rust Street, St Clair and danced along Gray Street, then St Clair Avenue to the British High Commission, then Nelson Mandela Park and finished at Rust Street. Some of the participants wore carnival costumes and danced with soca.
Pride TT co-chair Rudy Hanamji said just a few months ago that the community lost Brandy Rodriguez, head of the Trinidad and Tobago Trans Coalition.
“This is a person who educated himself. It came from the streets. She empowered herself and still could not access her inalienable rights. She could not access health care equally. She could not use funding, equity or housing. In 2021, Rodriguez was recognized by Queen Elizabeth II for her outstanding service in support of the trans community and LGBT+ rights.
“So in 2022, when you have vulnerable people in the queer community who don’t have all the privileges that some of us have and the legislation still doesn’t fully protect us, then we should have pride.”
Hanamji said Pride was a protest at the end of the day, even as the community celebrated all the things queer people contributed to the country.
He said there were still members of the community who were locked out of their homes and threatened with violence, and when they went before the courts, they were not protected by the Equal Opportunities Act as the law did not include sexual orientation.
The Equal Opportunity Act states in its definition of sex that sexual preference or orientation is not included.
Hanamji said he was hopeful at the TT despite global movements questioning some rights.
TT’s culture is different from that of North America and TT has a very integrated people, he said.
“On a small island, everyone knows a queer person. It could be a teacher, your doctor, your aunt, your nephew, etc. For the most part, since we started public pride five years ago, we haven’t seen that push back.”
Similarly, Sharon Mottley, head of the Women’s Group, a lesbian and bi organisation, said it was important to continue to protest and raise the visibility of the LGBT+ community.
She said the pride parade was a manifestation of all the work of those who went before and that it was important to continue mobilizing and demanding the rights of all people in TT for equal access and protection under the law.
Asked if she was concerned about some rights being stripped away in TT given the US Supreme Court’s overturning of Roe v. Wade, Mottley said some strides had been made in TT with women’s reproductive rights.
The US Supreme Court’s Roe v. Wade decision ruled, in 1973, that the 14th Amendment to the US Constitution gave women the right to obtain an abortion. That decision was overturned by the same court on June 24 of this year.
Mottley said TT needed to continue to make those strides regardless of what happens in the US.
She said there was a threat of women’s rights being disenfranchised globally and that happens when people get too comfortable and forget all the work that has been done to make these things possible.
“I think it’s a wake-up call for women around the world and for LGBTQIA people, even though we’ve made strides, how easy it is for the tide to turn if we become complacent.”
