The Constitutional Reform Commissioners have been given a significant task to come up with recommendations to improve and or expand our constitutional provisions which will align with the country’s new republican status.
There is also the perception that the Commission will somehow complete the cycle of true independence from Britain, by crafting an overarching document that reflects how our country ought to be governed in these modern, global circumstances.
So far, the commissioners who come from varied backgrounds, but are respected in their various fields of endeavour, have managed to generate some buzz among many Barbadians on a rather dry subject. This at a time, when most are distracted by events like the cost of living and daily survival.
The Commission’s chairman, retired Justice Christopher Blackman has implored citizens to grab this opportunity to contribute towards reshaping the constitution, the way they would want and that every suggestion and commentary will be taken into consideration when the group’s final document is drafted.
We are not certain what is driving the focus on constitutional rights in relation to the matter of gender and sexual orientation. It is possible that the Barbadian community is being impacted by what is regarded as the “culture wars” now gripping the United States of America body politic.
It is possible that emphasis on this has been spawned by the US Supreme Court’s decision to undo the landmark Roe Vs Wade precedent that granted American women termination of pregnancy rights, and the subsequent challenges expected to same-sex marriages and unions, and even access by women to birth control.
So, it was not surprising the media hype surrounding the positions outlined by Chairman Justice Blackman and the former Attorney General Adriel Brathwaite, the commissioner responsible for public outreach.
During a public meeting over the weekend at the Alexandra Secondary School in St Peter, the chairman responded to a submission that the laws making buggery, incest, and bestiality criminal offences, could possibly be unconstitutional.
While chairman Blackman said it was the responsibility of lawyers to challenge matters they deemed unconstitutional in the courts, he drew a strong rebuttal from Brathwaite for his reference to some attorneys as being lazy for not bringing constitutional challenges.
“In some respects, lawyers in Barbados have been lazy. If there have been concerns about the constitutionality of the buggery law, they should do what lawyers in other jurisdictions have done and take the challenge to the court . . . . At the end of the day, whatever we do is subject to oversight from the court,” Blackman admonished.
Brathwaite, who has been specialising in constitutional law and was in the forefront of challenging the constitutionality of some actions by government, took issue with the chairman.
Brathwaite posited a similar view to one we have outlined in this editorial space on several occasions, that Barbados has, by and large, been a very liberal and tolerant society to alternative intimate relationships. He stressed that the country has allowed people to peacefully live their lives without the law dictating with whom they could be intimate.
“That particular section of the Sexual Offences Act requires someone to make a complaint, so that if two consenting adults decide they want to have a [same-sex] relationship, that is not the concern of the law. Someone first needs to complain. The section protects children because children cannot consent, so to suggest lawyers should have brought an action negates the fact consenting adults in Barbados were allowed, for generations, to have whatever type of relationship they required,” Brathwaite pointed out.
He suggested that in their attempts to seek asylum in countries like Canada, some Barbadians were falsely stating they would be persecuted here because of their sexual preferences.
What is important to note is that at some point, Barbados and its constitution will have to grapple with the matter of the right to marriage by same-sex couples, inheritance rights of same-sex partners, and of course, the right to foster and adopt children.
Though we agree with the former attorney general “consenting adults, males in particular, have been all about the country – for years – [living their lives] without any problems” it is the constitutional rights of such persons with which the Commissioners must concern themselves, and what changes they will recommend to the Mia Mottley administration at the end of the process.
