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Get you up to speed: UK leaders need to ‘show some balls’ after court overturns Trinidad anti-LGBTQ+ law | News World
A British court has upheld a legal challenge against a law prohibiting homosexuality in Trinidad and Tobago. The Judicial Committee of the Privy Council ruled that the Caribbean nation’s anti-LGBTQ+ legislation is ‘unconstitutional’.
The Judicial Committee of the Privy Council ruled that the anti-LGBTQ+ legislation in Trinidad and Tobago infringes on the rights to private and family life, constituting an infringement of constitutional rights. The ruling represents a significant legal development after a high court judge initially sided with Jason Jones in 2018, but was later partially overturned by Trinidad’s Court of Appeal, which had reintroduced prohibitions on consensual anal sex.
The Judicial Committee of the Privy Council has declared Trinidad and Tobago’s anti-LGBTQ+ legislation unconstitutional, marking a significant shift in the legal landscape for LGBTQ+ rights in the Caribbean. Jason Jones, the activist behind the case, urged British and Caribbean leaders to “show some balls” and take action against discriminatory laws, emphasising the urgent need for change in attitudes towards LGBTQ+ communities.
What remains unclear — It is uncertain how the ruling will specifically impact the enforcement of anti-LGBTQ+ laws in Trinidad and Tobago moving forward.
UK court upholds legal challenge against Trinidad and Tobago’s anti-LGBTQ+ law
Human rights activist Jason Jones (Picture: LatinContent Editorial)
A British court has upheld a legal challenge against a law prohibiting homosexuality in Trinidad and Tobago.
The Judicial Committee of the Privy Council (JCPC) ruled that the Caribbean nation’s anti-LGBTQ+ legislation is ‘unconstitutional’.
Jason Jones, the LGBT campaigner who brought the case, said the decision would have a ‘domino effect’ and ‘change the lives of millions’.
British and Caribbean leaders must ‘show some balls’, Jones added.
The dual British and Trinidadian citizen has fought against the country’s ‘buggery law’, introduced in 1925 under British colonial rule, since 2016.
Under Section 13 of the Sexual Offences Act, a man who engaged in consensual sex with another man could be sentenced to 25 years in jail.
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A high court judge sided with Jones in 2018, but Trinidad’s Court of Appeal partly overturned the ruling and recriminalised consensual anal sex
Trinidadian laws criminalising private same-sex relations were incompatible with the nation’s constitution (Picture: Getty Images)
The five-member privacy council, based in London, allowed Jones’ appeal, ruling that the law infringed Jones’ rights to a private and family life.
‘The ability to form a deep connection with another person through an intimate and loving relationship is a vital interest for all human beings,’ the judges said.
Jones said the British government bore responsibility to help change attitudes towards LGBTQ+ Caribbeans, with many of the discriminatory laws relics from colonial-era legislation.
The JCPC maintains jurisdiction in 32 territories, including 11 independent nations.
A total of 29 Commonwealth countries continue to criminalise private consensual same-sex activity.
‘We need some of them to show some balls and speak on this issue and start to help dismantle [homophobia]’, Jones said.
‘We have people that are literally dying around the world, from HIV, from the harm that these laws perpetrate and condone.
‘So, that violence has to be addressed, and nobody’s doing it.’
Lord Sales, a Privy Council judge, said the anti-LGBTQ law was incompatible with the ‘right to respect for private and family life’.
He said: ‘Whatever might have been the position in 1986, the current understanding of the fundamental individual right to respect for private and family life is that it protects such a core part of human identity as one’s sexual orientation and the sexual activities carried on in private between consenting adults to give expression to that identity.’
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October 12, 2024
6:18 am
‘Cheer up, you caught the bad guy,’ says killer Virginia McCullough as she is arrested for murdering her parents
A woman who murdered her parents “in cold blood” before hiding them in makeshift tombs for four years told officers to “cheer up, you caught the bad guy” as she was arrested in her home.
Virginia McCullough, 36, poisoned her father John McCullough, 70, with prescription medication and fatally stabbed her mother Lois McCullough, 71, shortly afterwards in 2019.
She ran up large debts on credit cards in her parents’ names and after their deaths, she continued to spend their pensions until she was finally caught in 2023.
In body-worn video footage released by police, a handcuffed – and eerily calm – McCullough told officers: “I did know that this would kind of come eventually.
“It’s proper that I serve my punishment.”
She said she had slipped something into her father’s drink then put his body under a bed on the ground floor, and put her mother’s body in an upstairs wardrobe.
McCullough, having been arrested on suspicion of double murder, told an officer: “Cheer up, at least you’ve caught the bad guy.”
She added: “I know I don’t seem 100% evil.”
At the police station, she told officers where a kitchen knife was, which she described as a “murder weapon”, and a hammer which she said “will still have blood on it”.
McCullough, of Pump Hill, Chelmsford, Essex, was sentenced to life imprisonment on Friday with a minimum term of 36 years at Chelmsford Crown Court, after she admitted to their murders between 17 and 20 June 2019 at an earlier hearing at the same court.
Chelmsford Crown Court heard how she hid their bodies in makeshift tombs at the family home in Great Baddow in Essex, then told persistent lies to cover her tracks.
The court heard she cancelled family arrangements and frequently told doctors and relatives her parents were unwell, on holiday or away on lengthy trips.
But concerns over Mr and Mrs McCullough’s welfare were raised in September 2023 by a GP at their registered practice, and Essex County Council’s safeguarding team referred these to police.
The GP had not seen the couple for some time and said Mr McCullough had failed to collect medication and attend scheduled appointments. It was found McCullough had frequently cancelled appointments, using a range of excuses to explain her father’s absence.
Police said a missing persons investigation was initially launched and McCullough lied to officers, claiming her parents were travelling and would be returning in October.
It became a murder investigation, and when officers forced entry to the house in Pump Hill on September 15 2023, McCullough confessed that her parents’ bodies were in the house and that she had killed them.
Nicola Rice, a specialist prosecutor for the Crown Prosecution Service, said: “McCullough callously and viciously killed both of her parents before concealing their bodies in makeshift tombs within their home address.
“She spent the next four years manipulating and lying to family members, medical staff, financial institutions, and the police, spending her parents’ money and accruing large debts in their name.”
She added: “This was a truly disturbing case, which has left behind it a trail of devastation, and I can only hope that the sentence passed today will help those who loved and cared for Lois and John begin to heal.”
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November 23, 2024
8:25 am
Defense alliance NATO chief Mark Rutte has met US President-elect Donald Trump to discuss global security issues, according to a NATO spokesperson.
The meeting took place in Palm Beach, Florida.
During his first term as US president, 2017-2020, Trump pushed for European NATO countries to spend more on defense and described the alliance’s cost-sharing as unfair to the US.
Rutte took over as NATO chief from Norwegian Jens Stoltenberg in November.
Before taking office in January, Trump has nominated Pete Hegseth for the post of defense secretary, which has raised eyebrows among many allies.
Hegseth, 44, has served as an infantry captain in Iraq and Afghanistan, but has no senior military or government officer experience.
November 23, 2024
8:25 am
November 23, 2024
8:17 am
Multiple missiles were fired in an airstrike towards a densely populated part of Lebanon’s capital early on Saturday.
The huge airstrike targeted Beirut’s Basta neighbourhood, and no prior warnings were given by the Israeli military. The largely residential area was struck last month.
At least one violent explosion was heard across the city, Reuters witnesses said, and plumes of smoke could be seen. Scenes of massive destruction at the site were shared online, including a massive crater in the ground.
“Beirut, the capital, woke up to a horrific massacre, as the Israeli enemy’s air force completely destroyed an eight-story residential building with five missiles on Al-Mamoun Street in Basta,” the state-run National News Agency reported.
The health ministry put the initial death toll at four, with 23 wounded. The number is expected to climb in the coming hours as search and rescue efforts continue.
It came after a long day of Israeli airstrikes on Beirut’s southern suburbs, which have been non-stop since last week.
The cross-border fighting between Israel and the Iran-backed Hezbollah militant group escalated into a full-blown war in mid-September.
Israel has bombed southern Lebanon, Beirut’s southern suburbs and the eastern Beqaa region, and has sent ground troops across the border. Hezbollah has continued to fire rockets deeper into Israel.
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