From Dr Leonardo J Raznovich

1. I thought that you would be interested in this news <http://gu.com/p/4y8gc/sbl>  it strongly and directly supports Bishop Wilson’s presentation at the QP7 conference last weekend. Particularly relevant is that this statement is made by the Bishop Bayes of Liverpool, who is a senior evangelical bishop within the C of E, a sector which has historically taken a very discriminatory approach towards LGBT people within and outside the church.   
2. On a second point, Pastor Torrance Bob and the Reverend Alson Ebanks, two leaders of the local churches, appeared on TV with Tammy Sulliman on Thursday 16 June. It is a great step forward that Rev Ebanks stated the importance of having a dialogue. It is sad, however, that Pastor Torrance Bob and Rev Nicholas Sykes made efforts to boycott the conference. Particularly concerning was Pastor Torrance Bob’s statement published in the Cayman Compass on 7 June 2016 that there is ‘a war being waged’ against the bible and Christian values. To my knowledge, no LGBT person is attacking religion; they merely seek to be treated with dignity and respect and that quest should not be misconstrued as an attack on religion.  An attack on religion is something that I would never advocate in any circumstances.  Indeed, many LGBT people are themselves religious and want to live a full life embracing both his/her sexuality and his/her religious beliefs and spirituality.  These LGBT people have the right to do so for the same reason that Pastor Torrance Bob is entitled to embrace his religious beliefs and spirituality: freedom of religion.  Pastor Torrance Bob does not own Christianity nor the bible; it is because of this freedom of religion that Bishop Wilson of Buckinghamshire’s reading of the bible and Bishop Bayes of Liverpool’s reading of the bible are, each, at the very least as authoritative as Pastor Torrance Bob’s reading of his bible.  At the Conference we learned from Bishop Wilson that the verse in the Old Testament declaring homosexuality as being an abomination is followed by a statement declaring, as equally abominable, sexual intercourse with a woman during certain periods of the month; that both verses exist is a fact, not a matter of opinion.  Why is Pastor Torrance Bob obsessed with homosexuality and not with the regulation of sexual intercourse between opposite sex people when ‘his bible’ declares that both are abominable behaviours? Further, if the Pastor Torrance Bob and Rev Alson Ebanks are truly honest about dialogue, it is rather difficult to understand why they missed the opportunity of having that dialogue at the Conference itself, where all these matters could have been debated openly with academics and high ranking theologians. 
3. A final point that I should like to address is the concept of neo-imperialism, which Rev Ebanks used on TV to categorise the goal of LGBT equality. This was tangentially discussed during the conference in relation to the situation in Jamaica. It would have been great to have local Cayman churches bringing this issue to the surface at the Conference.  I shall not deal here with the evident logical flaws of arguing neo-imperialism given the current legal status of the Cayman Islands as an Overseas British Territory: I should like to state simply that the UK is not imposing anything upon the Cayman Islands against their will (which would be an essential element for neo-imperialism to exist), the Cayman Islands by virtue of wishing to remain an Overseas Territory of the UK has to accept the international obligations imposed upon the UK by international law.  This is simply because the UK has has ultimate responsibility over all its Overseas Territories under international law.  However, I should like to deal with the most important substantive issue: whether the universal declaration of human rights could be labelled neo-imperialistic.  This resists any logic.  No colonial territory or sovereign state in the world can use culture or religion to justify the criminalisation or, even, legal segregation of a section of its population without destroying the basic understanding of equality. Arabs states do, but they are not democracies, they are theocracies and as such they remain absolute monarchies.  Equality was born with the rise of the liberal western state when absolute monarchical regimes were left behind, it is not simply a modern European or American concept as Rev Ebanks suggested.   

The Supreme Court of Canada, whose decisions are legally persuasive in the Cayman Islands stated this point very clearly more than two decades ago (in 1995 in Egan v Canada, a case in which the Supreme Court held that the equality clause contained in the Canadian Charter would be interpreted in a manner that prohibited discrimination on the basis of “sexual orientation” even though it did not mentioned it, a precedent followed by the European Court of Human Rights in Mouta v Portugal in1999, decision that is binding authority in the Cayman Islands).  In Egan v Canada the court explained that it is important to note that for the liberal western world (to which the Cayman Islands belong), equality has not meant identity or uniformity. To assert that all men are equal means that all men should be treated fairly and their differences acknowledged. The court stated in this case that:

‘equality refers to each individual as unique and distinct. Because of the uniqueness of individuals, their tastes will vary infinitely from matters as prosaic as food and clothing to matters as fundamental as religious belief.  …’

‘Religion has been described as being premised on a “fundamental choice” … [Conversely] Sexual orientation [similarly to race or gender] is a deeply personal characteristic that is either unchangeable or changeable only at unacceptable personal costs.’

‘Individuals, because of their uniqueness, are bound to vary in those personal characteristics which may be manifested by their sexual preferences whether heterosexual or homosexual. So long as those preferences do not infringe any laws, … however different they may appear to be to the majority, are all equally deserving of concern, respect and consideration.’

In other words, LGBT equality is not a neo-imperialist concept. It is rooted in the most fundamental principle of western democracy, i.e. equality, which makes western states different from other forms of state in the world and, more importantly, different from those absolute monarchical regimes left behind more than two hundred years ago. Further, religion, being a ‘choice’, cannot be used to override equality, nor cant it be used to justify discrimination on the basis of race, gender or sexual orientation without destroying the premise upon which our modern state is rooted: equality.  This is so because race, gender and sexual orientation are not choices, but they are a fundamental personal characteristic of the individual.    No religion could be used today (under the idea of freedom of religion) to justify segregation (let alone criminalisation) of women because of their gender or coloured people because of their race. Under the rule of law, the same holds true in regards to sexual orientation.

Dr Leonardo J Raznovich
Visiting Senior Research Fellow
Intersectional Centre for Inclusion and Social Justice
Canterbury Christ Church University
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Education Officer of the LGBTI Law Committee of the International Bar Association

Videos of Bishop Wilson and Justice Zaffaroni’s presentation at QP7

You can access the video of the two key note speakers of the Queering Paradigm Conference held in the Cayman Islands early in the month here:

1) The following link https://vimeo.com/171043972 contains the video of the lecture by the Justice of the Inter-American Court of Human Rights Raúl Zaffaroni.  Sadly, the massacre of Orlando is illustrative of Zaffaroni’s lecture. 

 If you click in the link above (or copy and paste it in your internet browser), you will be prompted to enter a password, which is: minidisc

2)  The following link http://youtu.be/gFjlzNUcNyk  contains the video of the lecture by the the Bishop of Buckinghamshire, Alan Wilson. 

 It does not require password.

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See also iNews Cayman  related story published June 14 2016 “Church of England should be made to allow gay clergy to marry – Bishop Alan Wilson” at: http://www.ieyenews.com/wordpress/church-of-england-should-be-made-to-allow-gay-clergy-to-marry-bishop-alan-wilson/

See also iNews Cayman related story published June 9 2016 “Cayman Islands pastors oppose LGBT event/Bishop Alan Wilson to speak” at: http://www.ieyenews.com/wordpress/cayman-islands-pastors-oppose-lgbt-event/

See also our Editorial published June 13 2016 “The Editor speaks: I hate to write this…. where is LOVE?” at: http://www.ieyenews.com/wordpress/the-editor-speaks-i-hate-to-write-this-where-is-love/