Jason Jones will make legal history this week as his effort to overturn Trinidad and Tobago’s colonial-era anti-gay laws reaches the final court of appeal. The case, scheduled for hearing by the Judicial Committee of the Privy Council in London, represents the first time the centuries-old British institution will rule on decriminalizing same-sex intimacy in a former colony.
The statutes in question originated from Britain’s 1533 Buggery Act and were formally enacted in Trinidad in 1925. They were later incorporated into the country’s 1986 Sexual Offences Act. In 2018, a high court judge declared the laws unconstitutional, citing violations of privacy and equality rights. An appellate court later reversed that decision, reinstating the ban on anal sex between consenting men.
From colonial relic to modern legal battle
Jones, a longtime LGBTQ+ activist, launched his challenge in 2015 after feeling betrayed by unfulfilled promises at a Commonwealth summit. He left Trinidad in the 1980s, citing the laws as a key reason for his departure. “Britain’s Buggery Act was enacted in 1533, and its slave trade began in 1562,” he stated. “Slavery ended in 1807, but we’re still fighting. We remain the only group criminalized for protected identities.”
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His 2018 victory sparked Trinidad’s first Pride event and inspired similar legal challenges across the Caribbean, notably India. Six regional LGBTQ+ organizations have submitted briefs supporting his case. The personal toll has been significant. “I’ve lost all my family and most of my friends,” Jones said. “People called me crazy, insisting it was impossible.”
A May gathering in London’s Parliament, attended by activists and former Love Island winner Amber Rose Gill, saw him downplay his role. “I’m nothing special,” he remarked. “I dropped out of college. I survived HIV. I’m just a very angry gay man. I think about all the friends and lovers I’ve lost over the last 40 years. This was a dream we couldn’t imagine back then.”
A case built on legal technicalities—and irony
The Privy Council’s ruling will depend on Trinidad’s “savings law” clauses, which preserved colonial-era statutes after independence to maintain judicial continuity. Jones’s legal team contends that the 1986 Sexual Offences Act, though rooted in older laws, introduced fundamentally new provisions. These included harsher penalties and expanded prohibitions, such as criminalizing anal sex between women. Because of these changes, the team argues, the act should not be protected by the savings clause.
“It was a new piece of legislation,” explained James Hulmes, Jones’s senior counsel. “The preserved laws became irrelevant when Trinidad introduced fundamentally different statutes that fall outside the savings clause’s scope.”
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Religious groups continue to oppose the challenge. Yet public opinion appears to favor reform. The country has openly gay cabinet ministers and a transgender senator.
Jones described the fight as draining. “I’m stepping back from the front lines of advocacy,” he said. “I’ve done what I could. Now I’ll focus on training the next generation of activists. Most people enter this work out of desperation, not inspiration. I want to inspire instead.”
The five-judge panel, which includes outgoing Supreme Court President Lord Reed, is expected to issue its decision later this year.
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