Activist wins 10-year fight against homophobic Trinidad and Tobago laws

Jason Jones welcomes decision by privy council in London to overturn 2025 ruling that outlawed anal sex

A gay man has won a historic 10-year battle against Trinidad and Tobago’s homophobic laws with a landmark UK appeals court ruling that could help overturn similar anti-gay laws in other Caribbean countries.

The privy council, based in London, overturned a 2025 decision by Trinidad and Tobago’s court of appeal that recriminalised consensual anal sex, seven years after the Trinidadian activist Jason Jones secured a high court judgment declaring the country’s colonial-era “buggery” laws unconstitutional.

In explaining its ruling on Tuesday, the court said: “The ability to form a deep connection with another person through an intimate and loving relationship is a vital interest for all human beings.”

“This judgment will have a domino effect across every country that has the privy council as its supreme court. It will change many millions of people’s lives,” Jones said in a statement.

“I’m looking forward to going home, switching off everything and living with this moment for a while.”

His lawyers hailed Tuesday’s unanimous judgment as a “phenomenal victory”.

“The judgment recognises the human reality at the heart of the case,” the statement from Freedom Law Chambers said.

“It expressly recognised that a loving relationship between two men engages the constitutional protection of family life. For LGBTQ+ people who have lived with stigma, fear and the threat of criminal punishment, that recognition has profound personal significance.”

The privy council is the final court of appeal for Trinidad and Tobago and several other Commonwealth countries, giving the ruling potentially far-reaching significance for other Caribbean jurisdictions where similar laws remain in force.

Jones has been fighting the “buggery law”, whose origins date to British colonial rule, for a decade. In a historic 2018 victory, high court judge Devindra Rampersad ruled that the provisions criminalising consensual anal sex were unconstitutional. But the government appealed, and in 2025 the court of appeal overturned that decision.

Tuesday’s privy council decision restores Jones’s victory, with all five judges finding that sections 13 and 16 of the Sexual Offences Act 1986 must be interpreted consistently with the constitution so that they do not criminalise private, consensual sexual relations between adults of the same sex.

It marks the latest significant advance for LGBTQ+ rights in the Caribbean, after a landmark ruling in St Lucia last year, when the Eastern Caribbean supreme court struck down colonial-era laws criminalising consensual gay sex.

Asked whether this would make Jones, who has lived in London for several decades, feel comfortable living in Trinidad again, he said no. “The thing about liberation movements is every time you move the needle forward, you get the pushback. I got a lot of pushback from the queer community [in Trinidad] saying: ‘Don’t stir the pot.’ But you have to. I’m not afraid of pushback.”