Deni single-handedly spearheaded an MSM organization devoted to the HIV/AIDS awareness and education, who wrote my first coming out story as a gay man living with HIV. This was the early days of an organization known today as Friends for Life.Īnd I remember Deni James, a relentless advocate for men-who-have-sex-with-men and HIV-positive people.
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I remember Geoffrey Stanford, a gay rights and HIV activist and educator who facilitated weekly MSM chat rooms in Godfrey’s backyard. His home had become a place of safety for many, including trans sex workers who ‘worked’ the streets at night. Godfrey’s backyard was home to many community meetings, performances and Pride celebrations. He used not only his voice but his playwriting skills staging One Of Our Sons Is Missing which addressed HIV and bisexuality, at a time when it was considered a taboo. I remember Godfrey Sealy, the first openly gay HIV positive man in Trinidad and Tobago who spent his life educating and challenging HIV related stigma. I also remembered the people who had fought and died in the quest for this day of decriminalisation, and who never got to see it. Outside the Hall of Justice in Port of Spain, the wave of emotion matched with the wave of rainbow flags signaled that justice had come. This land that now presents me with hope that I can return in my later years and retire with my husband.
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And it is the land that robbed me the full enjoyment of my human rights, denied me protection when I needed it and policed my sexuality. Trinidad and Tobago is the land of my birth. I felt the carnivalesque energy and beauty of a land whose watchwords include tolerance.
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The news that Trinidad and Tobago has decriminalized homosexuality meant love won.Īcross the seas in a foreign land that has offered me safety, I felt it.
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Two simple words that matter to LGBTIs in Trinidad and Tobago who have been continuously told they are less than human because of who they are and who they love.