Dear Editor,

The decision of the University of the West Indies (UWI) to terminate the appointment of Dr Brendan Bain as the head of the Caribbean HIV/AIDS Regional Training (CHART) Initiative has brought into focus the ongoing debates in Caribbean Community states where homosexuality has been considered socially unacceptable, at best, and/or criminal, at worst.

These statutes have their roots in the colonial period when laws were often patterned upon jurisprudence established within Great Britain and other European states.

The University of the West Indies has been charged with the responsibility of co-ordinating the effort to provide critical scientific information to regional audiences about HIV/AIDS as a public health challenge. Central to this initiative is the creation of a climate which would facilitate an open discussion of the ways that vulnerable populations could be afforded the advice and care necessary to treat the disease and to lower the rates of infection among the target groups.

A major plank of the CHART project is support for efforts to end the criminalisation of homosexuality as a way of ensuring that access to health care is available to all HIV-positive persons.

In this context, the current campaign mounted against efforts to decriminalise homosexuality in the Caribbean Community has confronted the hostility to homosexuality that is part of the cultural and religious fabric of the societies in which religious conservatism and evangelical streams of contemporary Christianity have gained increasing legitimacy in recent decades.

On the other hand, the growth of scientific understandings of the roots of sexual identities and practices has led to an increasing awareness that traditional religious sentiment is not an adequate guide to dealing with the complex scientific and cultural issues that have arisen from the emergence of HIV-AIDS in the regional and wider international context.

Dr Bain’s dismissal followed his submission of expert testimony in a case brought by a Belizean man, Caleb Orozco, challenging the constitutionality of Section 53 of the Belizean criminal code which states: “Every person who has carnal intercourse against the order of nature with any person or animal shall be liable to imprisonment for 1- years.”

Orozco’s challenge has led to an active campaign by religious figures and their allies in Belize against the decriminalisation of homosexuality in the country. The case remains before the Belizean courts.

In interesting ways, this case speaks to a fundamental problem that has defined a long-standing and recurrent tension in Western civilisation — the conflict between science/secularism and religion/faith in shaping the legal parameters of the social order.

The UWI’s decision to remove Dr Bain from the leadership of CHART, and his legal challenge to that decision will offer the courts an opportunity to define the relationship between religion and science in the contemporary Caribbean.

That decision will also have implications for educational institutions and their intellectual autonomy within the Caribbean Community.

Cary Fraser

Former president

University of Belize