{"version":"1.9","identifier":"1a3dfc8f-5fda-49c5-bfd4-b3930db02837","language":"en-US","title":"Trinidad's ban on gay sex falls at the Privy Council. The state offered no evidence to defend it","layout":{"columns":7,"width":1024,"margin":32,"gutter":20},"componentLayouts":{"text":{"columnStart":0,"columnSpan":7,"maximumContentWidth":720,"margin":{"top":12,"bottom":12}},"photo":{"columnStart":0,"columnSpan":7,"margin":{"top":20,"bottom":20}}},"componentTextStyles":{"default":{"fontName":"HelveticaNeue","fontSize":18,"lineHeight":29,"textColor":"#171717"},"headline":{"fontName":"HelveticaNeue-Bold","fontSize":36,"lineHeight":42,"conditional":[{"conditions":{"maxViewportWidth":480},"fontSize":28,"lineHeight":34}]},"intro":{"fontName":"HelveticaNeue","fontSize":20,"lineHeight":28,"textColor":"#555555"},"caption":{"fontName":"HelveticaNeue","fontSize":13,"lineHeight":19,"textColor":"#666666"},"byline":{"fontName":"HelveticaNeue","fontSize":13,"lineHeight":20,"textColor":"#666666"},"body":{"fontName":"HelveticaNeue","fontSize":18,"lineHeight":29,"paragraphSpacingAfter":14,"linkStyle":{"textColor":"#00704a"}}},"metadata":{"canonicalURL":"https://567politics.com/news/trinidad-tobago-privy-council-jason-jones-buggery-serious-indecency-ruling-november-2026","datePublished":"2026-11-11T12:05:11.157004Z","dateModified":"2026-11-11T12:07:05.393353Z","authors":["567 Politics staff"],"excerpt":"A unanimous London ruling says \"tradition\" alone can't justify the 1986 law. The final order is pending, and religious leaders say they reject it.","thumbnailURL":"https://pub-fac99da959e344fe99d810d309cef7df.r2.dev/photos/article/1a3dfc8f-5fda-49c5-bfd4-b3930db02837/8ecc2a2942d4f252828e9ec8ebb4569a.jpg","keywords":["tt"],"generatorName":"Frog News","generatorVersion":"1.0"},"components":[{"role":"title","text":"Trinidad's ban on gay sex falls at the Privy Council. The state offered no evidence to defend it","textStyle":"headline","layout":"text"},{"role":"intro","text":"A unanimous London ruling says \"tradition\" alone can't justify the 1986 law. The final order is pending, and religious leaders say they reject it.","textStyle":"intro","layout":"text"},{"role":"byline","text":"By 567 Politics staff · Published November 11, 2026","textStyle":"byline","layout":"text"},{"role":"photo","URL":"https://pub-fac99da959e344fe99d810d309cef7df.r2.dev/photos/article/1a3dfc8f-5fda-49c5-bfd4-b3930db02837/8ecc2a2942d4f252828e9ec8ebb4569a.jpg","caption":"Middlesex Guildhall in London, home of the UK Supreme Court and the Judicial Committee of the Privy Council, which ruled in Jason Jones's case on Nov. 10, 2026 · Paul the Archivist / Wikimedia Commons, CC BY-SA 4.0 (https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/4.0)","accessibilityCaption":"Middlesex Guildhall in London, home of the UK Supreme Court and the Judicial Committee of the Privy Council, which ruled in Jason Jones's case on Nov. 10, 2026","layout":"photo"},{"role":"caption","text":"Middlesex Guildhall in London, home of the UK Supreme Court and the Judicial Committee of the Privy Council, which ruled in Jason Jones's case on Nov. 10, 2026 · Paul the Archivist / Wikimedia Commons, CC BY-SA 4.0 (https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/4.0)","textStyle":"caption","layout":"text"},{"role":"body","format":"markdown","text":"Trinidad and Tobago can no longer treat private, consensual sex between adults of the same sex as a crime. On Tuesday, Nov. 10, the Judicial Committee of the Privy Council in London ruled for activist Jason Jones. The Privy Council is the country's final court of appeal. Its five judges agreed that sections 13 and 16 of the Sexual Offences Act 1986 breach his right to respect for private and family life. They dismissed the government's cross-appeal ([judgment](https://jcpc.uk/uploads/jcpc_2025_0095_judgment_8d1b8d26e8.pdf), neutral citation 2026 UKPC 38; [press summary](https://jcpc.uk/cases/press-summary/jcpc-2025-0095)).\n\nJones filed the case in February 2017. The ruling reverses part of a March 2025 Court of Appeal decision. That decision had kept a narrower, colonial-era version of the offenses alive. The ruling also reaches beyond one country. The Privy Council hears final appeals from several Caribbean states where similar laws remain. Human Rights Watch said it is the first time the body has ruled on whether such laws are constitutional ([Human Rights Watch](https://www.hrw.org/news/2026/11/10/trinidad-and-tobago-uk-court-overturns-same-sex-conduct-laws)).\n\nThe decision is not quite the last word. The judges will take more written submissions before they settle the exact wording of the order. Their \"provisional view\" is that the 2018 High Court remedy should stand ([judgment, para 89](https://jcpc.uk/uploads/jcpc_2025_0095_judgment_8d1b8d26e8.pdf)). As of Wednesday morning, 567 Politics found no public statement on the ruling from Prime Minister Kamla Persad-Bissessar's government or from Attorney General John Jeremie, whose office was the respondent. Religious leaders interviewed by the *Trinidad Express* said they reject it.\n\n## What the Privy Council decided\n\nThe Board, made up of Lord Reed, Lord Sales, Lord Briggs, Lord Burrows and Lady Rose, answered two questions, and the Attorney General lost on both.\n\nThe first was whether the constitution's \"savings clause\" shielded the 1986 provisions. Section 6 of the 1976 Constitution protects laws that existed when it took effect from rights-based challenges. It also protects later laws that merely \"repeal and re-enact\" those old laws with changes. The government argued that sections 13 and 16 simply re-enacted the 1925 offenses of buggery and gross indecency. A majority of the Court of Appeal agreed in 2025. The Privy Council did not. The 1986 Act's long title says it was passed \"to repeal and replace\" the law on sexual crimes. The Board called it \"a new and comprehensive regime.\" That made it new law, open to a constitutional test ([press summary](https://jcpc.uk/cases/press-summary/jcpc-2025-0095)). Savings clauses, the Board said, \"should be interpreted narrowly.\" Otherwise they would protect large areas of old law that Parliament had already reviewed.\n\nThe second question was about section 13 of the Constitution. It lets Parliament pass laws that conflict with fundamental rights if a supermajority votes for them, and the 1986 Act was passed that way. But there is a condition. Such a law still falls if it is \"shown not to be reasonably justifiable in a society that has a proper respect for the rights and freedoms of the individual.\" The Attorney General argued that this test should be applied as of 1986, when Parliament acted. The Board held that the test applies now, when a person's rights are before the court. \"The constitutional rights in sections 4 and 5 are to be interpreted in a way which makes them practical and effective rather than theoretical and illusory,\" the judges wrote, according to the [Trinidad Guardian](https://www.guardian.co.tt/news/privy-council-rules-tts-buggery-laws-unconstitutional-6.2.2707748.ea2e4aaaf8). \"This means practical and effective in the present day, not in the past.\"\n\nOn the merits, the Board called the government's case \"very weak.\" The state's lawyer, Peter Knox KC, argued that the provisions re-enacted \"traditional laws of long standing.\" The judges replied that \"the mere fact that a repressive law has survived from colonial times so as to be 'traditional' in that sense plainly could not furnish a legitimate objective\" under the constitution ([judgment, paras 70–72](https://jcpc.uk/uploads/jcpc_2025_0095_judgment_8d1b8d26e8.pdf)). They left a door open: a law reflecting social traditions that remain widely accepted could, in principle, serve a legitimate aim. But that would need evidence of how strong the tradition is and whether it still fits current values. The Attorney General \"has not adduced any evidence\" of that kind (para 73). The state filed no evidence at any stage. So Jones's sworn account of harassment, attacks and fear of arrest went unchallenged (para 4).\n\nThe Board relied heavily on a 1981 European Court of Human Rights case, *Dudgeon v United Kingdom*. That case struck down similar laws in Northern Ireland. The Board quoted its line that \"'Decriminalisation' does not imply approval.\" It also quoted the point that some people's shock at private homosexual acts \"cannot on its own warrant the application of penal sanctions when it is consenting adults alone who are involved\" (para 79). Lord Sales, delivering the decision, said: \"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 Guardian](https://www.theguardian.com/world/2026/nov/10/activist-jason-jones-wins-10-year-fight-against-homophobic-trinidad-tobago-laws)).\n\n## What changes in the law, and what does not\n\nThe practical effect is that sections 13 and 16 \"must be interpreted subject to the Constitution so as to make it clear that they do not apply to criminalise private, consensual sexual relations between adults of the same sex\" ([judgment, para 89](https://jcpc.uk/uploads/jcpc_2025_0095_judgment_8d1b8d26e8.pdf)).\n\nThe two sections reached further than many readers might assume. Section 13 defined buggery as anal intercourse \"by a male person with a male person or by a male person with a female person,\" so it applied to opposite-sex couples too. Section 16 made \"serious indecency\" a crime. It defined that as any act other than intercourse \"involving the use of the genital organ for the purpose of arousing or gratifying sexual desire.\" The only exceptions were husbands and wives, and consenting men and women aged 16 or older. That definition, the [Trinidad Express](https://trinidadexpress.com/newsextra/privy-council-overturns-anti-gay-laws-in-t-t/article_723225d2-477f-4de2-a69f-674c6b874663.html) noted, covered intimacy between two women as well as two men.\n\nThe penalties had risen over time even as the offenses went unenforced. The 1925 law, as it stood in 1976, set a maximum of five years for buggery. The 1986 Act raised the adult-on-adult maximum to 10 years, and the Children Act 2012 set 25 years in all cases ([judgment, paras 11–15](https://jcpc.uk/uploads/jcpc_2025_0095_judgment_8d1b8d26e8.pdf)). The Court of Appeal's 2025 order cut that back to five years but left the offense in place for consenting adults.\n\n**Maximum prison term for consensual adult buggery in Trinidad and Tobago, by law in force**\n\nYears of imprisonment. The 2018 High Court order, which the Privy Council provisionally endorses, limits the offense to sex without consent.","textStyle":"body","layout":"text"},{"role":"htmltable","html":"
LawMaximum term
1925 Act (as in force 1976)5
Sexual Offences Act 198610
Children Act 2012 amendment25
Court of Appeal order, 20255
","layout":"text"},{"role":"body","format":"markdown","text":"Source: [Judicial Committee of the Privy Council judgment, paras 11-15 and 22](https://jcpc.uk/uploads/jcpc_2025_0095_judgment_8d1b8d26e8.pdf)\n\nWhat the Board provisionally endorses is the remedy Justice Devindra Rampersad wrote in September 2018. It rewrites section 13 so that buggery means intercourse \"without consent,\" with up to five years in prison. It amends section 16 so that, in the Board's words, \"there is no criminality where the parties are consenting adults\" (paras 21 and 87). The Board called that order \"an elegant and appropriate resolution\" that does \"the minimum necessary.\" Jones's lawyer, Anand Ramlogan SC, is a former attorney general. He asked the Board to delete both sections, since other criminal laws already cover acts without consent. The Board said it was \"not apparent\" he could ask for that, because Jones never appealed the 2018 order. If crimes such as buggery and rape overlap, it said, it is \"for the legislature not the judiciary\" to tidy up the statute book (para 87). Both sides now get to file written arguments on that point.\n\nThe ruling does not touch marriage, adoption, anti-discrimination law or any other question. Pride TT welcomed it as \"a significant moment\" but said \"discrimination, stigma, exclusion and unequal treatment remain realities,\" including in employment, housing and healthcare ([The Guardian](https://www.theguardian.com/world/2026/nov/10/activist-jason-jones-wins-10-year-fight-against-homophobic-trinidad-tobago-laws)). Jones himself said: \"We may not see the benefits of this for 50 years. What a judgment says in a courtroom and what happens in your home and workplace are two entirely different things.\"\n\n## How a 2017 lawsuit reached London\n\nJones, born in Port of Spain in 1964, has been openly gay since he was 16 and moved to England in 1996 after harassment and discrimination, according to the judgment (para 3). He lived in Trinidad again from 2010 to 2014. His affidavit, never contested by the state, described near-daily verbal abuse. He said he was attacked with rocks, bottles and pieces of wood while performing as a singer, and police did not protect him (para 4).\n\n**Jason Jones v Attorney General of Trinidad and Tobago**\n\n* **1925**: Offences Against the Person Ordinance criminalizes buggery; amended in 1939 and 1940\n* **1976**: Republican Constitution takes effect with a savings clause for existing law\n* **1986**: Sexual Offences Act passed by a special majority, \"to repeal and replace\" the old law\n* **2017-02-23**: Jones files his constitutional claim in the High Court\n* **2018-04-12**: Justice Rampersad rules sections 13 and 16 unconstitutional\n* **2018-09-20**: Rampersad rewrites the sections to cover only non-consensual acts\n* **2025-03-25**: Court of Appeal, 2-1, restores a five-year offense under the savings clause\n* **2026-07-08**: Privy Council hears the appeal\n* **2026-11-10**: Privy Council allows Jones's appeal and dismisses the state's cross-appeal\n\nSource: [Judicial Committee of the Privy Council](https://jcpc.uk/uploads/jcpc_2025_0095_judgment_8d1b8d26e8.pdf)\n\nAt the Court of Appeal, Justices Bereaux and Pemberton formed the majority. Bereaux wrote that \"the crime of buggery remained intact\" in 1986. In his view the Act re-enacted the same basic offenses, so it was protected as far as it repeated the 1925 version (para 22). Justice Kokaram dissented. He called the 1986 law \"new legislation that the Parliament was proud to have enacted.\" He warned that a broad reading of the savings clause had \"become a troubling comfort zone of stultifying the development of our social order\" (paras 24–25). The Privy Council's reasoning tracked the dissent on that point.\n\nAll three courts agreed on one thing: none of the judges who heard the case found the provisions reasonably justifiable today. Jones's lawyer Caroline Edwards said after the hearing: \"All judges who heard the case in Trinidad and Tobago were unanimous that the 1986 legislation was not justifiable in a society that has a proper respect for rights and freedoms, and all the privy council judges agreed\" ([The Guardian](https://www.theguardian.com/world/2026/nov/10/activist-jason-jones-wins-10-year-fight-against-homophobic-trinidad-tobago-laws)).\n\n## The case for keeping the laws, in the state's words\n\nThe government's legal argument rested mainly on deference to Parliament and on the age of the laws. It offered no new evidence of harm. The state set out its case in a [written case to the Board](https://jcpc.uk/uploads/The_Attorney_General_of_Trinidad_and_Tobago_and_others_v_Jason_Jones_Respondent_s_Case_e8fb6a99f4.pdf). It said the 1986 Act passed unanimously in both houses after \"extensive public comment.\" It said the Act repeated \"a traditional law of very long standing indeed throughout the common law world.\" And it said the country could treat these offenses \"in accordance with its own traditions.\" It cited an earlier Privy Council case, *Suraj*, which said courts should be \"especially respectful\" of laws passed by a supermajority and \"slow to substitute their own view.\"\n\nThe state also argued that Parliament's choice was justifiable by the standards of 1986. Every Commonwealth Caribbean country criminalized gay sex at the time, it said. Europe had no settled legal consensus either, and two judges had dissented in *Dudgeon*. The written case quoted the 1986 attorney general, who told Parliament that fear of HIV/AIDS meant \"we could not be seen to be doing anything to encourage that kind of activity.\" The state argued that Parliament \"was bound not to run too far ahead of the mores of the time.\"\n\nThe state did not defend the higher penalties or the extension of serious indecency to women, conceding that those parts went further than the old law allowed. The Board read that concession as revealing: it showed the government's case depended on keeping a law \"simply because\" it was old (para 71).\n\nThe Equal Opportunity Commission and the Trinidad and Tobago Council of Evangelical Churches are also listed as respondents ([press summary](https://jcpc.uk/cases/press-summary/jcpc-2025-0095)). DW, citing the Associated Press, reported that the Sanatan Dharma Maha Sabha, the country's largest Hindu organization, also contested the case ([DW](https://www.dw.com/en/trinidad-gay-sex-laws-privy-council-lgbtq-rights-caribbean/a-79912163)).\n\n## Religious leaders reject the ruling; advocates call it a regional turning point\n\nThe sharpest public opposition came from religious leaders interviewed by the Express. Inter-Religious Organisation president Dr. Ellis Burris told the [Trinidad Express](https://trinidadexpress.com/news/local/religious-leaders-reject-privy-council-s-same-sex-ruling/article_69ceec4e-d119-4faf-8da6-e98b5edc548d.html) that \"none of the divine religions have given support to this secular law,\" while adding that \"we should not be disrespectful. We should not be inhumane.\" Palo Seco Imam Lorris Ballack said he \"can't condone it\" and drew a line at further steps: \"If the State becomes part of it by allowing marriage certificates and men can adopt little boys, then I can't support it.\" Spiritual Shouter Baptist Archbishop Barbara Burke objected to a London court deciding the question: \"They could keep it up there in London. Why should a country with so many religions have to deal with it?\"\n\nBurke's objection touches a live constitutional question. Trinidad and Tobago still sends its final appeals to the Privy Council, and DW noted that the arrangement \"was already contentious in some circles\" before this ruling. The judgment itself applies the country's own 1976 Constitution, whose preamble affirms \"the dignity of the human person.\" The Board stressed that it was \"not concerned with making any value-judgment as to the morality of homosexual relations\" (para 78).\n\nAdvocates framed the ruling as a precedent. \"This judgment will have a domino effect across every country that has the privy council as its supreme court,\" Jones said in a statement reported by [The Guardian](https://www.theguardian.com/world/2026/nov/10/activist-jason-jones-wins-10-year-fight-against-homophobic-trinidad-tobago-laws). Ramlogan's chambers said in a release that \"every person is entitled to the protection of the Constitution, regardless of their sexual orientation\" ([Trinidad Guardian](https://www.guardian.co.tt/news/privy-council-rules-tts-buggery-laws-unconstitutional-6.2.2707748.ea2e4aaaf8)). Ramlogan told reporters that \"constitutional rights exist precisely because majorities are not always right\" ([DW](https://www.dw.com/en/trinidad-gay-sex-laws-privy-council-lgbtq-rights-caribbean/a-79912163)). Five groups intervened in support of Jones, including Colours Caribbean and the United Belize Advocacy Movement. They told the Board they represent nearly 200 regional organizations. They argued that limited enforcement is \"no answer to the profoundly detrimental effects of criminalisation\" ([interveners' case](https://jcpc.uk/uploads/The_Attorney_General_of_Trinidad_and_Tobago_and_others_v_Jason_Jones_Interveners_LGBTQ_advocacy_groups_Case_5011e4e5c9.pdf)).\n\n## Where the rest of the Caribbean stands\n\nThe judgment lists six earlier Caribbean court rulings striking down similar laws: Belize in 2016, Antigua and Barbuda and St Kitts and Nevis in 2022, Barbados, Dominica in 2024 and Saint Lucia in July 2025, and calls the trend \"clear\" (para 80). Tuesday's decision is the first time the Privy Council itself has ruled on such a law, according to Human Rights Watch. The Bahamas legislated in 1991, and the U.K. repealed the laws in five of its overseas territories in 2001, according to the [Attorney General's written case](https://jcpc.uk/uploads/The_Attorney_General_of_Trinidad_and_Tobago_and_others_v_Jason_Jones_Respondent_s_Case_e8fb6a99f4.pdf).","textStyle":"body","layout":"text"},{"role":"htmltable","html":"
JurisdictionStatus of the lawsRoute
BelizeStruck down, 2016Court
Antigua and BarbudaStruck down, 2022Court
St Kitts and NevisStruck down, 2022Court
BarbadosStruck down, 2022Court
DominicaStruck down, 2024Court
Saint LuciaStruck down, 2025Court
Trinidad and TobagoStruck down, 2026Privy Council
Jamaica, Grenada, St VincentStill in forceNot struck down
","layout":"text"},{"role":"body","format":"markdown","text":"The table draws its dates from the judgment and the Attorney General's case; the Barbados year is the one the state's case gives. Jamaica, Grenada and St Vincent and the Grenadines still criminalize sex between consenting adult men, the state's case says. In St Vincent a High Court judge upheld the laws in 2024. Jeshua Bardoo, a Vincentian lawyer and advocate, told The Guardian he expects the ruling to be \"very persuasive\" in pending cases there. That is a prediction. Whether other courts follow will depend on each country's constitution and its own savings clause. Ramlogan's chambers made the same caveat: \"The savings clause remains in force, but the decision provides an important basis for scrutiny where Parliament has chosen to replace old laws with new provisions.\"\n\nThe regional picture contrasts with legislatures elsewhere moving the other way. In Ghana, Parliament on Nov. 10 rescinded its May vote on the third reading of the Human Sexual Rights and Family Values Bill. The step lets it fix errors before a second reconsideration ([Ghana News Agency](https://gna.org.gh/2026/11/parliament-rescinds-decision-on-third-reading-of-anti-gay-bill/)). 567 Politics has followed the bill as [Speaker Alban Bagbin vowed to name anyone who obstructs the anti-LGBTQ+ bill](https://567politics.com/news/ghana-bagbin-anti-lgbtq-bill-rescission-motion-parliament-resumes-november-2026) and earlier [said it would pass after a second consideration](https://567politics.com/news/ghana-speaker-bagbin-anti-lgbtq-bill-second-consideration-october-2026). In Kenya, a parliamentary [petitions committee wants laws on same-sex relations strictly enforced](https://567politics.com/news/kenya-petitions-committee-penal-code-162-165-enforcement-lgbtq-interior-ministry-november-2026), while the Interior Ministry says a court ruling stands in the way. In the United States, the question has moved to ballots; Virginia voters this month considered [an amendment replacing the state's same-sex marriage ban with a right to marry](https://567politics.com/news/virginia-amendments-results-reproductive-freedom-marriage-voting-rights-november-2026).\n\n## What the public thinks is not well measured\n\nThere is no recent representative poll on these laws in Trinidad and Tobago that 567 Politics could locate. The most cited survey is old. In 2013, Caribbean Development Research Services (CADRES) surveyed roughly 1,000 people in each of Trinidad and Tobago, Barbados and Guyana. It used a stratified random sample of households, with a stated margin of error of plus or minus 5 points ([Griffith and Wickham, Caribbean Sexualities](https://www.caribbeansexualities.org/2017/07/11/attitudes-towards-homosexuals-in-trinidad-and-tobago-and-the-southern-caribbean/)). Respondents were told that the law outlawed buggery \"whether between two men or a man and a woman,\" public or private, consensual or forced, and asked whether they supported it. About 60 percent of Trinbagonians said yes, roughly a fifth were unsure and a similar share opposed it. Yet only 39 percent thought the law should penalize two men having sex in private. Just 4 percent wanted it to penalize a straight couple in private. The authors describe this gap as a kind of \"dissonance.\"\n\nThose findings are 13 years old and predate the 2018 High Court ruling. The authors also wrote that documenting such attitudes could help make \"a case\" for \"special protection.\" They cannot show what Trinbagonians think today. Reactions reported this week, from religious leaders on one side and advocates on the other, show where organized voices stand, not where the public does.\n\n## Remedy submissions and the options left to Parliament\n\nThe parties will file written submissions on the final form of the order, with Ramlogan seeking deletion of both sections and the state able to reply. Parliament could also act: the Board said it is for legislators to consolidate overlapping offenses, and the government could choose to amend the Sexual Offences Act to match the ruling. It could not restore the criminalization of consenting adults without facing the same constitutional test. Whether the government responds, and how, had not been announced by Wednesday morning.\n\nFor readers following how courts and legislatures handle sex and gender questions elsewhere, 567 Politics has also covered a [U.K. High Court challenge to trans-inclusive rules at the Hampstead Heath ponds](https://567politics.com/news/hampstead-heath-ponds-trans-access-high-court-sex-matters-city-of-london-november-2026), another case in which a court is being asked to decide how far a public body's rules may go.","textStyle":"body","layout":"text"}]}