Answers on the Domestic Violence Bill

First of all: #BlackGhettoYuteLivesMatter

I have answers. The ones I promised last week on the Domestic Violence Act. So many, it seems, that I’ll have to hold some back for next week.

1. Is a same-sex dating relationship eligible for an order of protection?

Absolutely! The Government has included a new provision to the Domestic Violence Act that makes people in “a relationship where the parties do not live together in the same household, but may be engaged in romantic, intimate or sexual relations” eligible for an order of protection.

And (unlike the explicitly heterosexual definitions of cohabitational and visiting relationships in the Act), as the PNM had its MP for San Fernando East Randall Mitchell point out deliberately in a clause-by-clause review of the bill during Wednesday’s House debate, this unmistakably includes a relationship between persons of the same sex.

A person is protected if he or she “is or was” in such a domestic relationship. In other words – during the relationship; after the relationship ends; or if the relationship changes. So people of any sex who were in a romantic, intimate or sexual relationship with each other, but did not live together, are eligible for an order of protection even after they break up. And people of any sex who were in a romantic, intimate or sexual relationship with each other, but did not live together, are eligible for an order of protection even after they move in together.

So, unless you started dating your roommate, if you’re in a same-sex relationship, the PNM has you covered. And, winkwink, they want you to know.

Sadly, however, a likely outcome is the police officer you call won’t have read further than last week’s headlines.

2. What was the specific amendment that Independent Senator Hazel Thompson-Ahye proposed – and why doesn’t the public get to see these changes “as circulated” that legislators make to a bill published on the Parliament website?

Parliament’s social media are hands-down the highest-functioning of any state entity. The website lets you download all bills that have been introduced, and allows you to monitor progress of each, showing when it was debated, each speaker in the debate, whether it’s passed, the vote tally in each house, and the date it was assented to or (partially) proclaimed by the President.

It offers convenient links to the Hansard, which records members’ verbatim contributions to the debate and in committee deliberations. Staff often also create a “bill essentials” that goes beyond the bill, providing rationale and background information.

The committee stage of a bill is where the legislators discuss and make word-by-word changes to the bill before voting on passing it. Like the rest of every sitting in each chamber, it’s broadcast live on radio and cable television. And it streams on Youtube with pre-assigned links. So from your laptop you can pause, rewind and follow the proceedings.

Increasingly, presiding officers are disciplining the committee process so instead of spelling out the changes a member wants to propose to the bill, (s)he is required to submit the change in written form, and the “committee of the whole” votes on each “amendment” proposed to the bill, “as circulated.”

There’s a key gap for the citizen, however: these circulate among the members and are voted up or down; but we rarely see them, and they don’t get spelled out in the committee process, because they’ve been written down.

I’ve e-mailed and called Senator Thompson-Ahye asking her to share the text of her amendment; but for some reason she hasn’t responded. Her debate presentation, however, was brilliant. I’ve never seen an Independent senator be more effective, holding the State to account for flowery promises we had made in Geneva before the UN Human Rights Council in March 2012 to prove we were serious about human rights. (Find and read those voluntary commitments yourself off the UN website: A/HRC/19/7/Add.1).

3. What does letting people under the same roof who aren’t related have access to an order of protection for domestic violence have to do with the sodomy laws? Or the savings clause?

The short answer every senior lawyer I’ve asked has given is: Nothing.

The long answer is about politics.

After reading the bill, LGBTI advocates asked our fellow civil society advocates also lobbying on the bill, as well as the Opposition and Independent senators, not to waste time in an election year fighting Government over explicit inclusion of same-sex relationships in the legislation. We’d been figuratively backdoored into the legislation, and Government throughout our collaboration bluntly refused to remove man-and-wife language from cohabitational and visiting relationships.

What concerned us instead was how badmind, carried over from the original legislation, impacted non-LGBTI people. To prevent same-sex couples from being covered in 1999, the government of the day had restricted people under the same roof from getting protection unless related by blood, marriage or adoption.

Continued next week.