THERE IS one fact about bullying in schools you will not hear religious leaders, politicians or their ilk talk about.
That fact is this: 28 per cent of students – one in four – are bullied on the basis of their perceived sexual orientation or gender expression, according to one of the last surveys on this issue.
“You so gay,” “You like boys or what,” “Battyboy,” “Buller,” “Faggot” – if you are uncomfortable reading such words, consider this: these are not just the common slurs scrawled on the walls of bathroom stalls in schools all over the country. They encapsulate, in language, the reality of intolerance many students face day to day, week to week, month to month, year to year. One in four.
But statistics lie. Most minors face this issue in a silence beyond the reach of pollsters. Nobody wants to be seen as weak. Nobody wants to admit to being called names. Nobody wants to risk losing a parent’s love by telling them all the boys in school think they’re gay.
When homophobia increases, bullying increases. When intolerance prevails, children are afraid to speak. Just as students are silenced, so too is discussion of the impact of homophobia on our most vulnerable actively suppressed. Like homosexual love itself, it is the form of bullying that dare not speak its name.
Where does homophobia originate? It starts, literally, upon arrival in this country.
The Immigration Act bans the entry of homosexuals. The prohibition does not apply to citizens, but the message is clear. When Elton John, whose career might not have been what it became were it not for the inspiration of Trinidadian Winifred Atwell, performed in Tobago in 2007, a group of pastors cited the act in a failed bid to stop him. Officials say this law is not enforced. Yet it is the existence of the law that sends the message.
Citizens fare no better than foreigners under other laws. The Equal Opportunity Act permits discrimination based on sexual orientation.
It is not that the legislation merely omits this kind of discrimination in its provisions. It goes out of its way to tell courts they are not to assume this group of people is protected. The Court of Appeal in 2022 proved this: it declined to purposively interpret the act. One judge in the case said the astuteness of the legislation’s policy of exclusion was “no concern of this court.”
Others have been more generous. In 2016, in response to a question in Parliament about measures to protect LGBTQ people, the Prime Minister said, “Every citizen of TT, regardless of who he or she may be, they have the protection of the written Constitution in letter and spirit in TT.”
Letter and spirit? Tell that to the Court of Appeal.
And tell that to a bullied child crying in a bathroom stall.
To what use will he put that theoretical constitutional fact? Will he retain senior counsel to injunct his tormentors?
At least Dr Rowley noted the police have a duty to all citizens, regardless of who they sleep with. Opposition Leader Kamla Persad-Bissessar, meanwhile, has flipflopped. When she was PM
