Britain Will Hear Cayman’s Complaints on Gay Laws
CNN, February
18, 2001
GEORGE TOWN, Cayman Islands (AP) — A British
official said the government will accept a petition from Caymanian church
leaders angered that Britain struck down the territory’s laws against
homosexuality, but it does not plan to change its decision.
The British government in January scrapped its five Caribbean territories’
anti-gay laws, which it said violated human rights agreements Britain had
signed. The move angered religious leaders in the conservative islands. A
group of church ministers in the Cayman Islands this month began circulating a
petition against it.
Ian Hendry, a deputy legal adviser for the Foreign and Commonwealth Office,
said "clearly we would read it with interest," but he noted that the
decision to repeal the laws against homosexuality "was made after long
deliberation."
"It is difficult to see now why a petition should put into reverse the
policy that was planned, discussed and carried out, not on a whim but in order
to give effect to an international obligation of the UK...," Hendry said
at a news conference Friday.
The order decriminalizing homosexual acts between consenting adults in
private also applies to Anguilla, the British Virgin Islands, Montserrat and
the Turks and Caicos Islands.
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