JAMAICA’s Supreme Court will today hear a controversial motion challenging the constitutionality of the buggery law.

The claim was filed by United States-based advocacy group AIDS-Free World on behalf of confessed Jamaican homosexual Javed Jaghai.

The hearing, which is expected to be watched closely the world over, comes two days after Christian groups staged mass gatherings in separate sections of the island calling on the state to say no to the repealing of the country’s long-held Buggery Act.

The hearing also comes on the heels of a challenge by gay Jamaican lawyer Maurice Tomlinson who sued three local television stations for refusing to air an advertisement promoting tolerance of homosexuality.

In today’s case, the court will be asked to determine if the anti-sodomy law breaches rights guaranteed under the Charter of Fundamental Rights and Freedoms which was enacted in 2011.

The group noted in a release that the Charter explicitly guarantees the right to privacy while pointing out that it also contradicts itself by preserving the 1864 anti-sodomy law.

The group noted that under this law, intimacy between two adult men in privacy is an offence which can carry a prison term for up to 10 years at hard labour.

The group is arguing that under the Charter it is illegal to enforce the anti-sodomy law as it breaches the right to privacy.

The anti-gay push seems to be set in train after the government decided to put a review of the buggery law on the back-burner to focus on other initiatives such as the economy and crime. Portia Simpson Miller, then Opposition leader, had promised in a pre-election debate in 2011 to review the buggery law, if again elected prime minister.

Meanwhile, the gay push has been met by a pushback by the church, which has been vocal on the issue.

On Sunday, hundreds of Christians staged two mass meetings — one in Montego Bay, St James, and the other in Kingston — in protest against a challenge to the buggery law.

“God says homosexuality and lesbianism are unlawful and unnatural, and no government has the authority to rebel against God by making lawful what He says is unlawful,” Pastor Leslie Buckland told the Kingston meeting.

“If they succeed, judging from what has happened in other countries where the buggery laws have been abolished, they are going to make it a criminal offence to speak against the homosexual lifestyle,” he added.