An LGBTQ+ rights activist will make legal history this week when his decade-long battle to remove Trinidad's homophobic laws culminates at the Privy Council in London, the Caribbean island's final court of appeal.
Jason Jones's case is the first time judges at the centuries-old British institution will decide on decriminalising same-sex intimacy, specifically ruling on sections of Trinidadian law derived from the "buggery law" introduced by the UK during the British empire.
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Those archaic laws, officially enacted in Trinidad in 1925 and carried into its 1986 Sexual Offences Act, were struck from the statute book in 2018 when High Court Judge Devindra Rampersad ruled they infringed upon Jones's constitutional rights to privacy and equality.
However, the landmark ruling was challenged by the then Trinidadian government and overturned on appeal, recriminalising anal sex between consenting men.
A Long and Lonely Fight
"Britain's Buggery Act was enacted in 1533 and its slave trade began in 1562. Slavery was abolished in 1807 but we are still fighting.
We are the only people still criminalised for our protected identities," Jones said.
"I began this journey in 2015. It's been lonely.
I've lost all my family and most of my friends. People said I was crazy and it was impossible," he added.
Jones has, however, won many new friends and supporters along the way.
His 2018 victory inspired Trinidad's inaugural pride event and legal challenges by activists in other countries, notably India.
