Pride TT has said it is dis­sat­is­fied with the rul­ing by the Court of Ap­peal in the Ja­son Jones case, which up­holds the bug­gery law as the law of the land in Trinidad and To­ba­go.

“This de­ci­sion is not a vic­to­ry for any­one. In­stead, it is a dev­as­tat­ing blow to hu­man rights, equal­i­ty, and the dig­ni­ty of all law-abid­ing, tax-pay­ing cit­i­zens in our na­tion,” a state­ment on Wednes­day.

The state­ment went fur­ther in say­ing, “By fail­ing to strike down this colo­nial-era law, the court has en­trenched le­gal­ized dis­crim­i­na­tion, re­in­forc­ing deep-seat­ed prej­u­dice, ha­tred, and stig­ma against LGBTQ+ cit­i­zens. How can we call our­selves an equal so­ci­ety when laws re­main in place that crim­i­nal­ize and pun­ish peo­ple sim­ply for who they love?”

Pride TT says the rul­ing not on­ly af­fects LGBTQ+ cit­i­zens but al­so “now crim­i­nal­izes both het­ero­sex­u­al and ho­mo­sex­u­al in­di­vid­u­als, mak­ing it a crime for any con­sent­ing adults to en­gage in pri­vate, in­ti­mate acts. This is not progress. This is re­gres­sion.”

“We are deeply dis­ap­point­ed that Jus­tice Bereaux and Jus­tice Pem­ber­ton up­held this law, fail­ing to rec­og­nize the hu­man rights vi­o­la­tions at stake. Their rul­ing is a step back­ward in the fight for an in­clu­sive, pro­gres­sive, and eq­ui­table so­ci­ety where every cit­i­zen – re­gard­less of sex­u­al ori­en­ta­tion – should have equal pro­tec­tion un­der the Con­sti­tu­tion,” the state­ment added.