Jamaica’s influential church community yesterday called on Parliament’s Joint Select Committee framing the Charter of Rights not to present its report to the House tomorrow, asking instead for further discussions to prevent the possibility of an unwitting acceptance of homosexuality.

According to the National Church Alliance, the vague language of the Charter could lead to the acceptance of consensual homosexual acts and allow judges to take activist positions and create policy without public accountability.

“The words ‘respect for private and family life, privacy of the home’ as innocuous sounding as they are, can be interpreted to allow for adult homosexual conduct in private,” attorney-at-law Shirley Richards, president of the Lawyers Christian Fellowship, told journalists at a news conference at the office of the Family Life Ministries in Kingston yesterday.

“We want to warn this country that once homosexual acts are decriminalised there will be no bar to gay marriages,” Richards said.

The National Church Alliance comprises the Jamaica Council of Churches, the Association of Evangelicals, Jamaica Full Gospel Churches, Western Union of Seventh-day Adventists and the Church of God in Jamaica. Their combined congregation is estimated at one million.

The group’s call comes five days after Senator A J Nicholson, who chairs the Joint Select Committee, made it clear that the Charter would not sanction same sex marriages.

“What we have done in this (the Charter) is to make sure that what is happening in European countries, the widening of it, cannot be interpreted this way by this constitution,” Nicholson said at last Thursday’s meeting of the committee. “Male and male marriage and female and female marriage cannot come out of this.”

The Charter, which has been under deliberation since 1991, is aimed at amending the Jamaican Constitution to better ensure the protection of human rights and freedoms.

Yesterday, the coalition of church leaders rejected the document in its present form, charging that it has excluded specific rights and has replaced them with generalisations, which would lead to interpretations by law.

“It is nebulous and leaves too many loopholes open for interpretation, said Major Neil Lewis, director of Operation Save Jamaica. “All we are asking for is a careful wording of the Charter to eliminate the possibility of criminal activity becoming legal through the back door.”

Reverend Peter Garth, president of the Jamaica Association of Evangelicals, called on the church fraternity islandwide to write to the Member of Parliament in their regions and express concern over the document.

In addition to the issue of homosexuality, the group argued that the Charter could create conditions under which preaching of the gospel could be curtailed and called for a retention of Section 21 of the Jamaican Constitution which protects the individual’s freedom of conscience, thought and religion.

The rights currently granted under Section 21 of the Constitution have not been fully repeated in the present Charter, said Richards.

She cited the right of a religious body to provide religious instruction in the course of education even though that body may be in receipt of financial assistance from the government.

A school like Ardenne High, which is owned by the Church of God of Jamaica but which receives government funding, could be in jeopardy of losing such financial support, Richards argued.

“It therefore means that if the Charter of Rights is passed, then we can say good-bye to devotions in schools. and to any type of religious instruction, as it will just be a matter of time before someone challenges the use of government funds for such purposes,” she said.

When the exercise of these rights is challenged it will be left up to the Courts to decide whose right should prevail, Richards added.