LGBT+ community celebrates five years of Pride

Pride TT and other supporting 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 celebrated pride (an event replicated globally) for more than 30 years, it was only 2018 that the first pride parade was held.

Scores of people gathered at Rust Street, St Clair and danced along Gray Street, then to St Clair Avenue at the British High Commission, then to Nelson Mandela Park and ended at Rust Street. Some of the participants wore Carnival costumes and danced to soca.

Co-chair of Pride TT Rudy Hanamji said only a few months ago the community lost Brandy Rodriguez, the head of the Trans Coalition of Trinidad and Tobago.

“This is a person who educated herself. She came from the streets. She empowered herself and she still could not access her inalienable rights. She could not access health care equitably. She could not access financing, equitably or housing. In 2021, Rodriguez was recognised by Queen Elizabeth II for her exceptional service supporting the trans community and LGBT+ rights.

“So in 2022, when you have vulnerable people in the queer community who do not have all of the privileges some of us have and the legislation still does not protect us fully then we have to have pride.”

Hanamji said pride was a protest at the end of the day even whilst the community celebrated all of the things queer people contributed to the country.

He said there were still members of the community who were locked out of homes and threatened with violence, and when they went before the courts, they were not protected by the Equal Opportunity Act as the law did not include sexual orientation.

The Equal Opportunity Act does state in its definition of sex that sexual preference or orientation is not included.

Hanamji said he was hopeful in TT despite global movements questioning some rights.

TT’s culture is different from North America’s and TT has a very integrated people, he said.

“In a small island, everyone knows a queer person. It could be a teacher, your doctor, your aunty, your nephew etc. For the most part, since we have started public pride five years ago, we have not seen that push back.”

Similarly, Sharon Mottley head of the Women’s Caucus, a lesbian and bi organisation, said it was important to continue to protest and raise visibility of the LGBT+ community.

She said the pride parade was a manifestation of all of the work by those who went before, and it was important to continue mobilising and demanding the rights of all people in TT for equal access and protection under the law.

Asked if she was concerned of the removal of certain rights in TT given the overturning of Roe versus Wade by the US Supreme Court, Mottley said some stride was made in TT with women’s reproductive rights.

The Roe versus Wade decision of the US Supreme Court ruled, in 1973, that the 14th Ammendment of the US Constitution gave women the right to have 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 despite what happens in the US.

She said there was a threat of the removal of women’s rights globally and that happens when people get too comfortable and forget all the work that went in to making these things possible.

“I think it is a wake-up call for women globally and for LGBTQIA people, even though we’ve have got stride, how easy it is for the tide to turn if we become complacent.”