A Trinidad and Tobago man has won a legal appeal that lasted almost a decade at the last appeals court available to him: the judicial committee of the Privy Council of former colonial power Britain. Jason Jones, a gay man born in Trinidad and Tobago, had challenged the Caribbean nation’s Sexual Offenses Act that prohibits consensual sexual relations between adult men, saying it violated his fundamental rights under the country’s constitution. He initially won his case in the High Court of Trinidad and Tobago, but the government and religious organizations managed to partially overturn the ruling once again, prompting Jones to take the case to the island nation’s highest appeal authority: the Privy Council of the United Kingdom. “To discriminate against someone simply because of who they choose to love is just ridiculous,” Jones told the Associated Press after Tuesday’s sentencing. The Privy Council in London is the final court of appeal for some Commonwealth countries, including Trinidad and Tobago, although that issue was already controversial in some circles before Tuesday’s ruling. The Judicial Committee of the Privy Council is the final court of appeal for the UK Overseas Territories, the Crown Dependencies and some Commonwealth countries, including Trinidad and Tobago. Image: Photoshot/picture Alliance What did the London court rule? A five-judge panel unanimously accepted Jones’ appeal, dismissing a cross-appeal by the Caribbean country’s Attorney General. It found that two sections of the country’s 1986 Sexual Offenses Act, which criminalized “sodomy” and “gross indecency” respectively between same-sex couples, violated Jones’ fundamental rights to private and family life set out in the 1976 constitution. The court wrote in its ruling that “the rights and interests of Mr. Jones at stake involve a particularly important facet of his existence and identity, as the ability to form an intimate and loving relationship with another person “is at the heart of the right to private and family life.” Anti-gay laws requiring up to five years in prison have not been enforced in recent history, but critics say they still send an intimidating message. Judge Philip Sales said in announcing the ruling that “the current understanding of the fundamental individual right to respect for private and family life is that it protects as central a part of human identity as sexual orientation.” Sales added that “laws that seek to criminalize such activities cannot be justified.” Trinidadian authorities argued that because the 1986 laws were passed with a supermajority and constituted criminal sanctions dating back to colonial times, before the constitution, they could be considered “existing laws” and override individual constitutional rights in certain circumstances. But Privy Council judges determined that the so-called “condition” for this special status – “unless it is shown that the law is not reasonably justifiable in a society which adequately respects the rights and freedoms of the individual” – had not been met. One of Jones’ lawyers, Anand Ramlogan, is a former attorney general of Trinidad and Tobago and argued against this position earlier in the case. “Constitutional rights exist precisely because majorities are not always right,” Ramlogan said. “They ensure that the dignity and equality of every citizen is not left to the changing tides of public opinion.” Who is the appellant? Jason Jones is a 61-year-old man born in Trinidad and Tobago. Openly gay since he was 16, he said he fled the country in 1996 because of homophobic violence and discrimination. Speaking to the Associated Press on Tuesday after what he called a “stunning victory,” he said he would describe himself as a “very angry gay man” whose anger had helped him persist in his legal appeal for so many years. “Society has treated me worse than a criminal,” he said. “There is a real sense of vindication with this ruling. Finally, the courts are seeing that they need to step up because our politicians are very stupid.” He said he was inspired to speak out after losing friends to HIV/AIDS and after meeting American singer-songwriter Nina Simone when she toured the island nation for three weeks in 1984, when he was 19. “Nina was the one who said, ‘Jason, get off this rock and go see the world,'” he said, calling it a defining and life-changing experience. A new bill in Ghana criminalizes LGBTQ+ activity. To view this video, please enable JavaScript and consider upgrading to a web browser that supports HTML5 videos. Trinidad and Tobago may not enforce its “sodomy” law, but it carries a prison sentence. Trinidad and Tobago’s government, the country’s Council of Evangelical Churches and its largest Hindu organization, Sanatan Dharm Maha Sabha, challenged the case, which has made its way through several courts since the appeal was launched in 2017. In 2018, Trinidad’s High Court declared the laws unconstitutional. But in 2025, a local appeals court partially overturned the ruling. The Trinidad Court of Appeal subsequently allowed Jones to seek a ruling from England’s final court of appeal. The case was being closely followed by activists across the Caribbean, and there were similar laws in force in several other countries in the region. The Bahamas decriminalized homosexuality in 1991. The United Kingdom repealed laws in the overseas territories of Anguilla, the British Virgin Islands, the Cayman Islands, Montserrat and the Turks and Caicos Islands in 2001. Judges in Barbados, Dominica, Saint Lucia and Antigua and Barbuda have also recently repealed similar laws. But in the former British colonies Grenada, Jamaica, Trinidad and Tobago and Saint Vincent and the Grenadines it is still a crime. The United Kingdom did not decriminalize gay sex until 1967, more than four centuries after so-called “buggery” laws were first introduced under King Henry VII, and more than a century after the last executions for the crime. People still faced prosecution or threat of prosecution for consensual gay sex between adults until after the Second World War, surely the most famous case in later years being that of computing and code-breaking pioneer and war hero Alan Turing.
