A government minister in Barbados believes straight people are being “harassed” in the fight for LGBTQ equality.
According to Caribbean Life, Steve Blackett, Minister of Social Care and Community Development, told “external forces and internal forces” that marriage equality would never happen in Barbados.
He also said that calls for equality had left straight people feeling “marginalized” and “harassed.”
“This LGBT lobby is so insistent, so persistent, claiming this community is being marginalized and stigmatized,” he said. “They have been so insistent and persistent that I, as a straight person, you as a straight person, we’re beginning to feel marginalized, harassed and stigmatized by them.”
Despite having some of the strictest anti-sodomy laws in the world, Blackett said that Barbados is tolerant of the LGBTQ community.
“If you want to be same-sex, that’s your business… nothing wrong with that at all. Barbados has always been tolerant to homosexuals among us,” Blackett said. “They are our relatives, our family or friends, our kith and kin, our hairdressers, our tailors…Same-sex relationships in most neighborhoods are nothing new.”
However, Blackett went on to contradict himself, saying that he considers transplanting the “foreign culture” of same-sex marriage into Barbados a degradation of the country’s values.
“That is what I have a problem with. We must also watch this creeping attempt to offend and insult our moral sensitivities here in Barbados,” he said.
A Human Rights Watch report this month found that LGBTQ people on seven Caribbean Islands, including Barbados, are “targets for discrimination, violence and abuse.” The report went on to say that the countries need to repeal their “colonial-era laws.”
Former President Donald Trump has tapped U.S. Senator J.D. Vance as his vice presidential running mate.
A self-acclaimed populist best known for espousing natalist domestic policies, the Ohio Republican echoes his party's lurch toward right-wing populism and a more nationalist, isolationist approach to foreign policy.
On social issues, Vance is nearly indistinguishable from Mike Pence, although he is more outspoken and confrontational about his conservative beliefs and values than the former vice president.
A Yale Law school graduate and the author of HillbillyElegy, a memoir detailing his upbringing in Appalachia, was elected to the U.S. Senate in 2022.
A federal judge ruled that a D.C. public high school must allow a Christian sports organization that denounces homosexuality to form a chapter at the school.
U.S. District Judge Dabney Friedrich, of the District of Columbia, ruled earlier this month that D.C. Public Schools violated the constitutional rights of members of the Fellowship of Christian Athletes (FCA) when it suspended -- and later barred -- the group from Jackson-Reed High School in Northwest Washington.
As recently as 2022, the club had previously been allowed to exist, to meet on campus, and to enjoy the benefits of being an officially recognized student club or group.
A teenager has been arrested in connection with an incident in which three gay men were allegedly "hunted" in Dublin's Phoenix Park by a knife-wielding gang of men.
The teen, 18-year-old Reece Murphy, of Clondalkin, Ireland, has been charged with violent disorder and production of a hammer as a weapon, as well as with dangerous driving at two locations within the park.
The three victims claimed to have been walking through Phoenix Park on June 17 when they were approached by an armed gang of six men carrying knives and other weapons.
The men said they were pursued by the group, but managed to escape unscathed.
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