6. What are the major challenges and successes you have faced in organizing?
The Bahamas – Erin Greene
Challenges: The gay community has continuously shown an unwillingness to maintain the levels of visibility required to ensure the enforcement of existing legislation and legal protections that offer recourse for discrimination and crimes against sexual minorities. Most members of the LGBT community are Christian and still wish to maintain strong ties to their church but face difficulties being visible in any activity that challenges the church or established religious doctrine. No programs currently exist for LGBT youth. Activists, including myself, fear being accused of ‘recruiting’ or cultivating sexual relationships with minors, and have found the government and existing social organizations unwilling to create or support such programs to address LGBT youth issues. I have found that the LGBT community is also unwilling to organize across class and race lines, with many Bahamians fearing repercussion from even this level of visibility.
Successes: The Anglican Church and the Royal Bahamas Police Force have expressed a willingness to improve the dialogue between these institutions and the LGBT community and to work together to improve services to the community. In July 2004, the Rainbow Alliance of the Bahamas held a welcome demonstration to support members of “Family Values” cruise hosted by Rosie O’Donnell and her family in Rawson Square – and offer a counter demonstration to the local protestors. The Royal Bahamas Police force carried out their duty to monitor and protect the members of our demonstrations and visitors in a professional and respectable manner.
Guyana – Joel Simpson
I suspect these are not unique. Challenges range from lack of resources, community apathy to downright indifference. The movement is generally unrewarding and fosters a lack of appreciation for the personal sacrifices many of us make in order to do this thankless work. Successes have been small wins like filing the cross-dressing constitutional suit – the first legal challenge in the Caribbean region to challenge laws which discriminate against our community – and the inroads we have made in the Inter-American human rights system on LGBT issues. I had the distinct honour of representing the Caribbean region at the first-ever thematic hearing on sexual orientation issues at the Inter-American Commission on Human Rights in October 2008. I also lead a project which culminated in a thematic hearing specifically on LGBT issues in the Caribbean in October 2010. I managed the production of SASOD’s first documentary short film, “My Wardrobe, My Right” which looks at the cross-dressing crackdown in Guyana. There have been very many ‘firsts’ of this sort that I would consider as organizing successes.
Martinique – Fred Cronard
This is the creation of the association and actions implemented. The association may develop a public debate within the population, through the various media, newspapers, television. In May 2012, we will organize a “Diversity Week” as part of World Day against Homophobia. During this week, several actions will be implemented in the direction of the students, the general public and LGBT. On this occasion, we will invite NGOs in the Caribbean.
Suriname – Tieneke Sumter, Chair of Women’ S Way Foundation and Chrystabelle Beaton member and LGBT advocate from the LGBT Platform Suriname.
The major challenges we face is how to find answers to deal with the homophobic response of several religious groups and persons in Suriname. We are aware that the more we will become stronger in our call for equal rights for ALL the louder the voices will become of the homophobes. Building the capacity of the LGBT community and our organizations is the next challenge we face. Working on the rights of LGBT’s is a full time job and we do it now in our spare time. In order to get the job done it will be important to receive more support and (financial) resources. We are still weak in documenting all the cases of discrimination. We are a were that only data will convince our government that LGBT’s are being violated and discriminated although our constitution says that they should be protected. We need to involve more relevant groups, (non) governmental organizations and companies to include sexual orientation in their policies.
Our successes are the establishment of the LGBT Platform Suriname, the activities in relation to National Coming Out Day; the first steps in establishing dialogs with several groups; the development of the information kit; the training of 14 LGBT junior advocates ; the several public awareness activities; the several activities we were able to organize for lesbian and bisexual women. But most of all we gave LGBT’s a face in our community and we made it very clear that we are everywhere and not going anywhere!
Trinidad and Tobago – Colin Robinson
Colin’s response to this question 6 is an audio.