A court recriminalises gay sex
Colonial law struck down, colonial law back again: a court in Trinidad made sex between men a crime once more.
On 25 March 2025, the Court of Appeal of Trinidad and Tobago delivered a ruling that shook the Caribbean queer community. By two votes to one, it overturned a decision that had been celebrated as a milestone almost seven years earlier. Consensual sex between men was once again a crime.
The case had been brought by Jason Jones. The activist comes from Trinidad but has lived in Britain since the nineties because he experienced violence and exclusion in his home country. He challenged two provisions of the 1986 Sexual Offences Act that criminalised anal intercourse and so-called serious indecency. In April 2018, the High Court in Port of Spain ruled in his favour and declared the sections unconstitutional. The Attorney General appealed.
The Court of Appeal now relied on a savings clause in the constitution. It shields laws that were in force before the constitution came into effect from judicial review. The majority found that the 1986 law was essentially a harsher re-enactment of old colonial provisions from 1925. These old rules therefore apply again, with milder penalties: at most five instead of twenty-five years in prison. The paradox: the ban now applies only to men, because colonial law did not cover women at all. Only parliament could change that, the court stated.
Jones reacted bitterly. The ruling made him a criminal again in the eyes of the law, he wrote. At the same time, he announced that he would take the case to London. For the British Privy Council is, of all things, still the island state's court of final appeal. In July 2026, five judges heard the case there.
The significance reaches far beyond Trinidad. Similar clauses can be found in several constitutions in the region. The laws are hardly ever enforced, but activists stress that they feed a climate in which exclusion and violence thrive.