The Judicial Committee of the Privy Council has unanimously struck down Trinidad and Tobago’s law criminalizing private, consensual same-sex relations in a landmark Caribbean LGBTQ rights decision.
PORT OF SPAIN: The highest court of appeal for Trinidad and Tobago struck down a long-running law that criminalized gay sex in the island nation, a landmark ruling for LGBTQ rights in the Caribbean.
The UK-based Judicial Committee of the Privy Council — the final court of appeal for British dependencies and overseas territories — issued a unanimous decision Tuesday that the 1986 Sexual Offences Act could not be used to prosecute private, consensual sexual relations between adults of the same sex.
The law had previously carried sentences of two years for “serious indecency” and five years for “buggery.”
