JAMAICA’S attorney general, Senator AJ Nicholson, has suggested a compromise between parliamentarians on the joint select committee studying proposals for the proposed Charter of Rights and christian activists who oppose the lack of specificity in the bill.

Senator Nicholson, who is both chairman of the committee and Minister of Justice, suggested that there was a real threat that the interpretation of various provisions of the charter by the courts, including the Privy Council, could be contrary to the intention of Parliament.

He was speaking during Wednesday’s meeting of the committee at Gordon House, which heard submissions from conservative church activists groups – Lawyers’ Christian Fellowship and the National Church Alliance – raising concerns that aspects of the Charter could encourage homosexuality and abortion as well as restrict the teaching of religion in schools.

“I hope the members of the committee will agree that these submissions (from the church groups) are extremely important. We, the committee, will have to … keep on struggling with what is placed on the table here. We know what is happening in the global village and we also know what is happening as far as how Jamaicans think on these subjects,” said Nicholson.

“I tell you the truth, I personally am afraid that if you don’t do something about it and it goes to the court, sooner or later, the buggery laws are going to be ruled unconstitutional. I entertain no doubt about that.”

The christian groups claim that there was a threat of a form of “cultural imperialism” being imposed on the society, when the standard of “free and democratic society” is used instead of the saving clause, “save only as may be demonstrably justified in a free, peaceful, orderly and democratic society do not take into account the norms and values of the Jamaican people.”