Guyana Church Leaders Want Anti-Gay Laws To Stay

News Americas, GEORGETOWN, Guyana, Fri. Aug. 10, 2018: More than eight dozen leaders of Guyana’s Christian Evangelical and Pentecostal church are urging the government to keep the country’s anti-gay law intact.

According to Demerara Waves news, the group took out a local newspaper advertisement registering their strong objection to any attempt by government to give into the demands by the gay and lesbian community to remove anti-gay laws including those against “buggery” in the South American CARICOM nation.

“Moreover, we believe buggery and other practices characteristic of the LGBTQ community, lifestyle is in fact, detrimental to persons engaging in them, and the decriminalization of such acts, will have the effect of escalating the practice of these harmful and destructive behaviors, and endangering the morals of our youth and society as a whole,” the church leaders stated.

Roman Catholic and Anglican Bishops were not among the signatories in the ad.

Guyana, like most British-Caribbean nations, inherited the anti-gay laws when independence was granted by Britain and have not moved to change them. Britain has since repealed those laws because they violate human rights.

Guyana is the only country in South America, and the only country in the Americas outside the Caribbean, where homosexual acts are still illegal. Under the laws of Guyana, homosexual acts carry a possible punishment of life imprisonment.

Guyana’s anti-gay laws according to the Criminal Law (Offences) Act of Guyana are as follows:

Section 352.

Any male person who, in public or private, commits, or is a party to the commission, or procures or attempts to procure the commission, by any male person, of any act of gross indecency with any other male person shall be guilty of a misdemeanor and liable to imprisonment for two years.

Section 353. Everyone who –

(a) attempts to commit buggery; or

(b) assaults any person with intent to commit buggery; or

(c) being a male, indecently assaults any other male person,

shall be guilty of felony and liable to imprisonment for ten years.

Section 354. Everyone who commits buggery … shall be guilty of felony and liable to imprisonment for life.

Section 355. Everyone who –

(a) does any indecent act in any place to which the public have or are permitted to have access; or

(b) does any indecent act in any place, intending thereby to insult or offend any person,

shall be guilty of a misdemeanor and liable to imprisonment for two years.