Gordon Barlow

Our Chief Justice has just legalised gay marriage in Cayman, by ruling our local constitution incompatible with our human-rights obligations. Our Governor approves of the ruling, as does the UK Foreign & Commonwealth Office (which is our colonial master), but all 19 of our elected legislators disapprove, and are appealing against the ruling. Fun and games!

uk_grenada

Jamesy5008

It's coming whether the MLAs like it or not. Some of the rhetoric and tub-thumping has been a sight to behold and some of the comments in the CNS have been quite incredible. UK ex-pats take same sex marriage and gay rights in their stride. It was expecting a lot for an island like Cayman to just go along with it. It would reflect very poorly on the UK if this wasn't implemented.

Gordon Barlow

Yes, all the Old-Testament Christians are out in force, aren't they, banging on about Sodom and Gomorrah. Ah well, it's only a few years ago that a private-school teacher was fired for getting pregnant while unmarried - despite the fact that marriage is very much an option here, traditionally. And, there are plenty of other countries in the world where same-sex marriages aren't legal. At the moment, the attention in Cayman is focused on the legal interpretation of our 2009 Constitution. That has to be gotten out of the way first.

Lion in Winter

Well sod 'em I say.

People should marry whoever they want, whatever the magic pixie in the sky says.

caretaker

Maybe the church doesn't want to concede the influence it has on politics, even at a local level. With Jamaica to look up to for successfully resisting gay rights they no doubt think the status quo can be maintained even if the laws change. If the argument that they lose a fortune in tourist dollars doesn't move them, the argument for equal rights on humanistic principles won't.

Gordon Barlow

Well, I think most people here - most voters, say - actually do distinguish between "gay rights" and "gay marriage". After all, it's only a very recent development in the Western World, to include the right to marry in amongst all the rights of gays and all the other GLBTQ+++ members of Western societies. I doubt if there would/will be all that many GLBTQ+++ individuals will boycott any cruise ship that calls here.

caretaker

Since the cruise ship boycott that grew out of the 1998 incident where the liner was turned away the Caymans has been advertised as "gay hostile" and protesters with placards still show up to greet gay cruises at the dock, so even if there isn't still an organized boycott there are probably many who decide to spend their holidays somewhere else. The government's decision to appeal Chief Justice Smellie's ruling legalising gay marriage seems to indicate that they believe the voters are against it. The British may have introduced the morality laws into the BWI but the 7th Day Adventists are what keeps them from being amended to conform to current British law. It's understandably popular because the government can say they're fighting for independence from colonial control instead of administering repression on behalf of the church. A co-worker from Jamaica and her Grenadian husband are 7th Day Adventists and I learned quite a bit about this attitude and the church's influence from them. The right to same sex marriage didn't come free in the west either, and years of litigation was the normal method. Canada is issuing a coin commemorating homosexuality being removed from the criminal code in 1969, but it wasn't until 2003 that same sex marriage was legalised in Ontario and it took 2 more years before it was legal country-wide.
The people who have a stake in success or failure of this appeal of the court's ruling aren't tourists, but the people who live there and can't marry their partners, as represented by the couple that brought it to court in the first place. At least the Caymans is in the news for something other than criminal money laundering or being a refuge for tax dodgers..

uk_grenada

Gordon Barlow

What the decision to appeal the ruling (that the Constitution allows same-sex marriage) actually indicates, is that the MLAs believe enough voters are against it to cost those MLAs their seats at the next election. They desperately don't want to lose their obscenely high salaries and pensions and all the expensive perks that go with the job. As well, there is an ongoing struggle with Britain (the FCO is our master) about how much autonomy the MLAs can exercise without going independent. Very few native-born Caymanians want to go independent, because the rest of them know that would kill the tax-haven.

So it's about more than just the Sodom-and-Gomorrah foolishness.

Jamesy5008

Not quite marriage but a black eye to MLAs.

https://caymannewsservice.com/2019/1...se-gay-unions/

uk_grenada

Well, civil partnership- or the redefining of marriage to include those partnerships is one thing, that makes sense, but actually gay marriage requires the clergy to agree, nothing to do with law.

Here, any politician or clergyman suggesting that is going to hell - i mean now, at the ballot box, and with their flock, i make no comment on any actual afterlife.

Jamesy5008

Well the Domestic Partnership Bill has been sunk by our MLAs, and some of the rhetoric has been quite incredible, particularly from the health minister Dwayne Seymour and his assertion that women are at their ahem....horniest ....during a full moon and that is the best time to procreate and repopulate Cayman. How he said that with a straight face I will never know. The best thing to come out of this is that the UK are now in a position to implement the original same sex marriage legislation. I predict riots in the streets and the end of civilisation as Cayman knows it