Veteran MLA calls homosexuals evil

Bodden Town MLA Anthony Eden

(CNS): One of the oldest sitting members in the Cayman Islands Legislative Assembly, Anthony Eden, has derided rights for the Lesbian Gay Bisexual Transgender (LGBT) community and warned that the next step would be bestiality, as “people demanded the right to make love to their animals”. Debating a private member’s motion asking government to preserve “traditional marriage”, Thursday, the 23-year political veteran was vehement in his condemnation of homosexuality, which he said was “evil”, and launched an outright attack on LGBTs.

In a speech focused on the Bible, he said Satan was working through educators and others, including the media, who used words to describe “deviant behavior” in a way to convince people it was acceptable.

“A social and moral evil is being promoted as normal behavior,” he said, adding that those who believe in the Bible are accused of hate speech.

He said his motion was one of the most important ones he had brought, insisting that marriage had to be between a man and a woman.

The first elected member for Bodden Town, who was one of the founders of the ruling People’s Progressive Movement, said that “what liberal progressives don’t understand” is that the Bible had predicted what was happening today.

In a speech in which he attacked not just the gay lifestyle but homosexuals themselves, in particular men, the MLA quoted from the religious conservative press and asked when it was that “child molesting had become man-boy love and crushing a baby’s skull and sucking out their brains had become a human right”.

Eden also threatened the possibility of violence as he warned homosexuals to stay away from his children or grandchildren.

Angered by the lecture series organized by the Truman Bodden Law School examining the inequities in Cayman Islands legislation relating to the LGBT community, Eden said the focus was misplaced but then, ironically, spent almost an hour of parliamentary time attacking the gay community.

The MLA said people were losing their homes, kids were going hungry, the country was in desperate need of a mental health facility and improving education standards but claimed that “people that come here” were focused on gay rights. He was particularly enraged by the implication from a visiting lecturer that Cayman needed to equalize the age of consent for all, regardless of sexual orientation, to sixteen years.

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Eden implied that allowing rights for homosexuals would lead to multiple husbands and man-boy love and various other behaviour, which he described as “wicked and immoral”, that he claimed, without explanation, would ruin people for marriage between a man and a woman.

Dismissing the idea of any reforms to protect the LGBT community from discrimination because of sexual orientation, the local politician also described medical problems that he believed were common among gay men because of the act of anal intercourse.

Taking an ultra-conservative position, the veteran MLA dismissed any consideration of rights for homosexuals and called upon government to “affirm to maintain the definition of marriage to be as expressly provided for by the Constitution and Law as being between persons of the opposite sex”.

The position taken by the 70-year-old member was echoed by some of the younger members of the Legislative Assembly.

His Bodden Town colleague and the youngest MLA, backbencher Alva Suckoo, seconded the motion. While his speech was less extreme than the one presented by Eden, he offered his support for what he described as the “important points”. He said it was a discussion that the country had to have because the rest of the world was promoting the idea of same-sex marriages and, as an overseas territory, Cayman would have to address the issue. Suckoo said that any decision made by political representatives in relation to the matter should not be made against what the people want.

He said he did not support a “lifestyle” or concept that goes against the local culture and said same-sex unions were a sin. Cayman, he maintained, was a Christian society. Suckoo also said he believed that members of the LGBT community were choosing that lifestyle and government “could not legislate for a sin”.

The only other MLA to speak on the motion, although it was supported by the members who were present in the Chamber when it went to the vote, was Finance Minister Marco Archer, who also pointed to his religious position for condemning homosexuality. Taking a ‘condemn the sin not the sinner’ approach, he was still keen to ensure that marriage remained between two people of the opposite sex. While acknowledging the fact that no formal legal petition has yet been made from the LGBT community, he was clearly fearful of the idea of marriage equality.

The minister said he liked to think he was a fair person. He said the LGBT community “shouldn’t be persecuted” because they are “humans just like we are and they have feelings just like we do”.

He said if there was a desire in that community for equality regarding property ownership, laws could be passed to provide for that without changing the definition of the marriage law or the Cayman Constitution.

The motion was largely academic as it simply reaffirmed what is already law, which would not prevent government for passing separate legislation for civil unions for same-sex couples.

The Human Rights Commission has advised government to begin addressing legislation because, given precedent already in the European Court of Human Rights, the Cayman Islands would struggle to defend its current position to continue discriminating against the LGBT community.