AIDS-Free World Lawyer Maurice Tomlinson from Jamaica Wins First David Kato Voice and Vision Award

On January 29, 2012, AIDS-Free World’s Legal Advisor on Marginalized Groups, Maurice Tomlinson, will become the first recipient of the new David Kato Voice and Vision Award, which honors courage and innovation in advancing the rights of lesbian, gay, bisexual, transgender, and intersex (LGBTI) people.

As a Jamaican lawyer and activist advocating for LGBTI rights in a country where homophobic hate crimes and discrimination proliferate, Maurice puts himself at risk every day.  It is rare for a Jamaican gay man to come out publicly and speak on behalf of sexual minority rights; most LGBTI advocacy in Jamaica occurs under cover of anonymity.  Maurice, however, has recognized that the LGBTI movement in Jamaica needs faces and voices, and he has decided to lend himself to the struggle regardless of the personal consequences.  

His charisma, tirelessness, and keen political sense have made it possible for Maurice to help build a movement across divides, and more than that, to unite HIV and AIDS organizations with LGBTI groups, women’s coalitions, and mainstream human rights networks.  His intelligence and charm have also enabled him to open doors to some of Jamaica’s most prejudiced but powerful members of society, including politicians and church leaders.  In the words of the Caribbean Vulnerable Communities Coalition, “Members of the LGBTI community celebrate him who is for many a hero, doing the things that they would only dream of doing for fear of their lives.”

It is precisely this combination of bravery, creativity, relentlessness, and commitment that the David Kato Voice and Vision Award honors.  David Kato was a courageous and inspiring person, a man who fought for equality, dignity, and the rights of all people in a place where espousing tolerance was dangerous.  He was murdered in his home in Kampala on January 26, 2011, several months after a tabloid published his photo as part of a diatribe urging violence against those it alleged were gay and lesbian.  It was an incomparable tragedy and an incomparable loss.  The prize honoring his legacy and memory will be presented to Maurice almost exactly one year after David Kato’s death, in London on January 29, 2012.

Like David Kato, Maurice Tomlinson is outspoken about sexual minority rights in a country where homophobia is strong and activism is risky.  As it happens, the road to activism for Maurice was unusual.  Over a dozen years ago, Maurice was a flight attendant for a major airline in Jamaica, and not particularly politically active.  In that job, his supervisor told him that he needed to act more “masculine,” as his voice and mannerisms were off-putting to customers.  His personal experience of raw discrimination on the basis of sexual orientation was revelatory.  And he rightly connected it to HIV/AIDS in Jamaica, realizing that the disease could affect anyone, but particularly those who were oppressed and driven underground because of their sexuality.

Maurice subsequently went to law school, where he learned that discrimination against sexual minorities violates international law, and can be challenged with the right tools.  After he obtained his law license, he initially practiced in the corporate realm, focused on intellectual property issues.  However, he found himself increasingly drawn to LGBTI activism.  He began to volunteer at Jamaica’s premiere LGBTI advocacy organization, Jamaica Forum for Lesbians, All-Sexuals and Gays (J-FLAG), where he served on the board of directors.  He also began to undertake pro bono work for Caribbean Vulnerable Communities (CVC), looking at a possible legal challenge to Jamaica’s anti-sodomy law.  In March 2010, Maurice began full-time work with AIDS-Free World as the Legal Advisor for Marginalized Groups.

Maurice’s efforts to reverse the tide of discrimination that threatens to engulf every LGBTI person living in Jamaica have been creative and comprehensive.  He communicates and meets regularly with government officials urging changes to bring Jamaican law and policy in line with international human rights standards.  He speaks publicly and often about the toll that homophobia in Jamaica takes on national efforts to combat the HIV and AIDS pandemic in his country … a pandemic that has exploded amongst Men who have Sex with Men (MSM) to a prevalence rate of nearly 32%.  Working collaboratively with many Jamaican organizations and networks, especially J-FLAG, he develops public education campaigns, including public service announcements and “Stands” advocating tolerance for all people in Jamaica. 

He reaches out to powerful community leaders—including those who openly espouse homophobic views—to try to find common ground.  He works to influence the next generation of Jamaican lawyers by teaching constitutional and international human rights law.   Maurice is often the man who receives calls when someone from the LGBTI communities is beaten, evicted from his or her home, arrested, or killed. He is also the man who transports the injured person to the hospital, or offers his home as a refuge.

Finally, and of equal importance, Maurice has launched an unprecedented legal challenge to Jamaica’s “anti-sodomy” law (which criminalizes consensual, same-sex sexual activity) at the Inter-American Commission on Human Rights.  This law, like many others of its kind, legitimizes homophobia by transforming homosexuals into criminals.  In Jamaica, where vigilante justice against criminals is tacitly accepted, the anti-sodomy law has the effect of marking every actual or perceived LGBTI person as available for mob violence.  This law also renders impossible a truly effective national response to the HIV and AIDS crisis, demonizing homosexuality, and inevitably discouraging access to testing, prevention and treatment. The legal challenge is the first of its kind at the regional level, and if successful, will have far-reaching implications for similar laws throughout the Caribbean and globally.

Maurice’s efforts to challenge homophobia in Jamaica have led, for the first time, to an open conversation in Jamaica about the rights of people of all sexualities.  This public debate is controversial, confrontational at times, and essential to changing the status quo.  But for Maurice’s work, supported by others in the LGBTI community, it simply would not have happened; public expressions of hatred and homophobia would have gone unchallenged, and LGBTI Jamaicans would have been driven further underground.  The result of these efforts is that, in the words of Jamaican activist Yvonne McCalla Sobers, “His courage has created space for some persons to reveal their support for tolerance.”

During the Jamaican national elections, held on December 29^th, 2011, the Leader of the Opposition, the People’s National Party, said—in contrast to Jamaica’s last Prime Minister, Bruce Golding—that she would have no objections to gays in her cabinet.  She won a landslide victory.  The governing party had focused the final days of its campaign on attacking the opposition leader’s statements of tolerance and inclusion, marking the government for all to see as the premiere party of homophobia.  That Jamaicans voted overwhelmingly for the party of inclusion, and therefore endorsed the opposition leader’s promotion of sexual tolerance, would not have happened without the public conversation challenging homophobia that Maurice, in a very real sense, initiated and pushed forward, inch by inch. 

The political victory has huge implications.  The new Prime Minister has promised a “conscience” vote on the anti-homosexuality law.

Maurice has borne the cost of these efforts courageously, but the hazard is real.  There is no question that Maurice Tomlinson is at risk in Jamaica.  Homophobic violence is common, as evidenced by the murders by machete, in November, 2011, of two gay men because of their sexual orientation.  Maurice has received several death threats and has been recognized and jeered at on the streets of Kingston and Montego Bay.  He regularly appears on television and radio to promote homosexual rights; he’s aggressively visible.  He writes letters to the editor of all the major Jamaican newspapers, and consequently his name has become notorious. 

Maurice Tomlinson recognizes that a movement, to be effective, cannot be faceless, and he is willing to risk his security to build that movement.  Like David Kato, Maurice has done this work in the service of human rights for all.  As Maurice said once the Jamaican opposition party won its recent victory, “Hope and love have triumphed over fear and hate:” his life’s work reminds us that profound change is possible.

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clm@aidsfreeworld.org