QUEER QUOTE: Barbados PM Responds Positively To LGBT Rights Inquiry

After the horrible news of the passage of virulently anti-gay legislation in Uganda that could lead to sentences of life imprisonment for homosexuality, it is nice to report some good news from another part of the world where people of color predominate.

In Barbados, which is one of the 77 countries which still has a sodomy law, Prime Minister Freundel J. Stewart has responded respectfully and positively to an inquiry from one of the few organized LGBT advocacy groups in the Eastern Caribbean country.

The following excerpt from his letter is today's Queer Quote:

I wish to acknowledge receipt of your letter dated November 5, 2013. In your letter,  you requested that Barbados, in the person of the Prime Minister, seek at this year's Commonwealth Heads of Government Meeting in Sri Lanka to have included in the agenda of the Meeting in 2015, an item on the rights of gays, lesbians, bisexuals and transgendered persons. 

Although matters of State did not allow me to attend the 2013 meeting, I wish to assure you that Barbados remains committed to the principles enshrined in the Universal Declaration of Human Rights and will continue, therefore, to lend its voice to calls both regional and international fora for the elimination of all forms of discrimination including discrimination against persons of differing sexual orientation.

This response is reminiscent of the letter the Prime Minister of Trinidad and Tobago wrote last year expressing her "personal" support for LGBT rights.

Anyway, it is indicative of a modicum of progress on LGBT rights in the region. Perhaps in addition to calling for an end to discrimination in regional and international fora PM Stewart might want to insure that his country has enacted legal prohibitions against LGBT discrimination.

Jus' sayin'.