David Hunt:

Crowds on the steps of the Hall of Justice in Port-of-Spain, the capital city of Trinidad and Tabago, erupted in cheers on learning that the high court had struck down the Caribbean nation’s archaic antigay sodomy statutes.

But that was then: April 12, 2018.

Seven years later — March 25, 2025 — the silence outside the courthouse was deafening. That was the day, just a few weeks ago, that a three-judge appeals court panel overturned the high court ruling, putting the antigay laws back on the books.

But there’s one voice that refuses to be silenced. 

Jason Jones:

It's gonna be hard, a hard fought victory, but I'm gonna win. I'm gonna win.

Hunt: 

That voice belongs to Jason Jones, a biracial, binational, queer activist who sued his home country in 2017, asserting that the colonial-era ban on gay sex violates his constitutional rights to privacy, liberty and freedom of expression.

Jones, who has fought for human rights on two continents for four decades, isn’t about to stop now. He’s appealing the appellate court decision. And this time the courtroom drama will play out in London, before the Judicial Committee of the Privy Council, at a place where a medieval refuge — called Sanctuary Tower — once stood. A place that offered protection from the overzealous enforcers of the Crown’s edicts.

If that’s an omen, it’s one Jones will readily embrace as he fights to overturn laws that date to the rein of Henry VIII.

I’m David Hunt. The island nation of Trinidad and Tabago — the southernmost country in the Caribbean — gained independence from the United Kingdom in 1962 after 160 years as a British Crown Colony. But that history is not as remote — or irrelevant — as it seems.

With the breakup of the British empire after the Second World War, it was common for former British colonies to insert language into their constitutions protecting existing colonial-era laws from being challenged on constitutional grounds. This language was called a “savings clause” or “savings law clause” and it did just that — it preserved the legal status quo as former colonies transitioned to independence.

But in some former colonies — including Trinidad and Tobago — that created a problem. The world has changed a lot since the waning days of the British empire. Laws covered by the savings clause have not. Even though Trinidad and Tabago adopted a new constitution in 1976 when it became a republic, and even though that more modern constitution has been amended more than a dozen times, the savings clause is still there, still in effect.

And among the old British laws it protects from judicial challenge is the Sexual Offences Act. Section 13 of that act criminalizes buggery — an old English word for sodomy, while Section 16 criminalizes serious indecency between persons of the same sex. Buggery became a part of English common law in 1533, giving King Henry VIII more control over vices that had been policed by the Catholic Church. It remained a capital offense until 1861. 

Jason Jones, who now lives in London — seat of a more constrained monarchy — grew up in Trinidad and Tobago, where he saw the impact of Britain’s colonial legacy firsthand. While Britain decriminalized gay sex in 1967 and approved same-sex marriage in 2014, its former colonies are largely stuck in the past. An antigay past. 

Out of 56 sovereign states within the Commonwealth of Nations, 30 still criminalize same-sex intimacy between consenting adults. Many of these laws are rooted in colonial-era penal codes such as the Buggery Act of 1533.

Jason Jones:

Well, that's the thing with colonialism, you know, they gave us independence, and that was it. They didn't give us anything else. So it's like, here you are freedom and f*ck off. But what that did was it left us 50 years behind the global north … So not only did they just walk out, wash their hands and say, f*ck off, you're free. But they've then hamstrung us with the savings clause so that we couldn't even get out of this cycle of violence that they have within British colonialism.

Hunt:

If you had assumed that Jones mobilized his legal challenge of Trinidad and Tobago’s antigay laws with the backing of LGBTQ political and legal groups, you’d be wrong. Jones and a small team of lawyers — working pro bono — have shouldered the cause and presented the case on their own, in the face of great odds.

Jason Jones:

In those kinds of very oppressive societies, it's very hard to galvanize a marginalized community interaction, especially when the majority of them are in either in the closet or in what I call the glass closet. I mean, we have a lot of famous queer people that everybody knows is queer, but nobody talks about it … When I filed my case, not a single organization came to my support. Not a single queer person came to my public support. I literally was left out to hang and dry on my own. One of the things that I have learned in my 35 years of activism is, you know, take the bull by the horns. Don't wait until it's done to you to get active. So this is why I brought the legal challenge myself, because I thought, this is not going anywhere. We, we are waiting on politicians who refuse to do this work for us. And you know, the, they need a kick up the *ss. And that's why I brought the case.

Hunt:

The legal strategy behind Jones’ case was mapped out by London solicitor Peter Laverack, then studying to become a barrister. He discovered that Trinidad and Tobago had changed its Sexual Offences Act three times — in 1976, 1986 and 2000. Because the law had been changed, Laverack asserted, it could no longer be protected from judicial challenge by the Savings Clause. The original law was effectively gone.

Jason Jones:

Everybody said this case was impossible. And Peter being queer and person of color, he kind of, you know, because I told everybody there has to be a way. So he went away and he did his research, and it was him that came up with the basis of, of the, of the of the case. And that kind of was what triggered all the other, you know, posh lawyers to jump on board and say, oh, yeah, this looks useful.

Hunt:

One of the lawyers who agreed to press Jones’s case was Richard Drabble, a celebrated public law attorney who has — in a career spanning five decades — argued before the Supreme Court of the UK, the House of Lords and the European Court of Human Rights.

In arguing Jones vs. Trinidad and Tobago, Drabble cast the nation’s colonial-era antigay laws as legal fossils, little more than fragile shells left over from a distant past. The world, he noted, is changing.

“Laws that criminalise consensual sexual intimacy between adults of the same sex,” he argued, “have been struck down or declared unlawful by courts around the world, in the Americas, Europe, Africa, Asia and Australasia and declared in contravention of international treaty law, including by The European Court of Human Rights.”

The strategy found a receptive party in high court Justice Devindra Rampersad, who ruled against the government in April 2018, striking down the antigay sections of the Sexual Offences Act. The ruling surprised everyone. Well, almost everyone.

Jason Jones:

Well, first one, I knew I was gonna win. I, I, I knew we had presented such a powerful case, and the judge justice Davindra Rampersad, who is a Hindu pundit in his private life, had said very early on in the case that religion had no place in this matter. And he knew that there would be a lot of religious stuff thrown around, but he, he's not entertaining it. This is a human rights issue, constitutional issue. So I knew I had the right judge. He was already making the right noises, and I, I had a sense that this case was at the right moment. So I really walked up the steps in the mindset of, of, I've won this. So when he read it out, I mean, the courtroom, of course, was in utter shock, because nobody thought I was gonna win. I was literally the only one who thought we were going to win.

Hunt:

Seven years later, in March 2025, as the appellate court prepared to render its verdict on the government’s appeal, thinking had changed. This time, Jones was the pessimist.

Jason Jones:

My lawyers thought we were gonna win. I said, no, we're gonna lose. And I had already mentally prepared for a loss … we had two delays in this judgment. And I could see what was precipitating the delays. And I knew, I knew, I knew that one judge was on my side, Kokaram. I knew one was definitely against me, Bereaux, and I knew Pemberton, the woman, was on the fence. And every time the case was delayed, I, I could tell something had precipitated her changing her mind. And the last one was the Trump inauguration. The last delay was two days after the Trump inauguration, and Trump did the whole only two genders, male, female, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah. And I knew that she, being a Black Christian, she would've been like, you know what? If Trump could do it, so can fucking do it too, can’t we? And that was it. It was Trump that, that led to this judgment.

Hunt:

Two of the three judges on the appellate panel, Justices Nolan Bereaux and Charmaine Pemberton, ruled for the government. And just like that, the Sexual Offences Act — with its antigay sodomy sections — was saved.

But that’s not the end of the road — or this story. The next chapter is set in London. Will the empire strike back, or strike out?

You’re listening to Tell Me, David — Queer Stories Past and Present. I’m David Hunt.

Jason Jones, a biracial, binational queer activist sued his country of birth, Trinidad and Tobago, in 2017 to overturn antigay sections of the Caribbean nation’s Sexual Offences Act. He unexpectedly won the first round in court in 2018, then just as unexpectedly lost on appeal this year, 2025. Even though Trinidad and Tobago is an independent republic with its own courts, its legal system is rooted in Britain’s colonial era. 

A quirk of that legacy is that Trinidad and Tobago’s court of final judgment does not sit in Port of Spain, the capital city. It’s called the Judicial Committee of the Privy Council, and it sits in London in the Supreme Court building across from Parliament between Westminster Abby and the Treasury building – poised as it were, between God and mammon.

Later this year, the council will take up the case of Jones vs. Trinidad and Tobago. Jones explains:

Jason Jones:

The appeal is in process. I have 21 days, so we're drafting the appeal now … even though I, I even though it's not a great position to go into the appeal at the Supreme Court level, but at the same time, it is a very good position because I needed to wake people up because people thought that the 2018 was a done deal, and it was all done and dusted. … And this, this loss has woken everybody up to realize what I've been trying to say to them. This is not gonna be done until the fat white people in Britain sing. And that's where we're headed. And listen, it's gonna be a difficult victory for sure.

Hunt:

The journey that has led Jones to London and to prominence as a queer activist began in Trinidad and Tobago, where he was born shortly after the country gained independence and where he grew up in a family and community that encouraged his love of the performing arts.

Jason Jones:

I sang solo in the churches. My grandmother played the organ in the Catholic church, so I was a kind of a central figure in the Catholic church choirs, and then got involved with performing and, uh, theater and, you know, that kind of became my queer family. … So, as I tell people, I, I never came out, my parents outed me when I was about 14 because of the homophobic bullying that I was receiving. Luckily I had very enlightened parents who weren't afraid to deal with what the issue was. And, uh, both my parents were journalists. Uh, my father was the first black television announcer in the entire global south, and my mother was a very famous journalist here in the United Kingdom. So, they were both very, very, uh, intelligent and very aware of homosexuality and were friends with gay men. So, you know, this was not, this was not an unknown quantity to them. So, you know, it was very easy for them to say, oh, well, you know, go talk to Uncle Peter. Go talk to Uncle Michael. They, they'll tell you what the deal is. And, um, I'm very lucky that I had, I, I call them my fairy gardens, and my fairy god uncles, four of them mainly were very instrumental in my upbringing and my, um, my coming to terms of as being a proudly queer man.
 
 Hunt:

Jones also cites the influence of his stepfather, Black power activist Rex Lassalle, for encouraging his self-acceptance and self-reliance. Lassalle gained fame in April 1970 when — as an army lieutenant — he led a mutiny against the government, refusing orders to fire on citizens during a brutal crackdown of the Black power movement.

Jason Jones:

Rex was seen as, as quite a hero of the, of the Black Civil Rights Movement around the world, not just in Trinidad. So by, by the time he was living with us in our home, you know, it, it, it was very clear to me that this was a person of, of great importance. It always kind of led me to believe that I could do whatever I wanted, you know, that I had a choice, that there, there wasn't a set path, you know, particularly in post-colonial co post-colonial countries, there are very specific routs for people from certain classes in certain color backgrounds. And you know, that, that really kind of blew that outta the water for me and allowed me to just say, well, yeah, I can do whatever I want. And that was very unusual for the time. Very unusual.

Hunt:

Lassalle made it possible for Jones to make a move that would change his life — a move across an ocean and across a cultural divide — to London.

Jason Jones:

I had been in the theater for three years, training in musical theater in Trinidad, and I'd gotten the bug to kind of, you know, pursue theater and performing. And also I had done three weeks with Nina Simone that, that carnival. So this is, this is the year that I turned 21, so this is 1984. And Rex said, well, listen, if, if you want to go, I'll buy you a ticket, but I'm only buying you a one-way ticket, so, you know, you gotta get out there and make it. So, yeah, he bought me a one-way ticket, and I left Trinidad on my 21st birthday, landed in London, and was in a job within two days.

I worked in the video cafe in Oxford Circus, one of the first music video cafes in, in the World. And yeah, then started working. I got some, some really interesting parts in the West End. I was in a musical about Martin Luther King, written by Martin Smith that starred Clark Peters and Obba Babatundé and Sharon D. Clark. And, you know, huge raft of huge black performers at the time. So, you know, things were looking really good. But as, as I went up the ranks more and more, it, it was, it was said to me by casting agents, listen, we cannot cast you. We, we, you know, this was the, this was in the days before blind casting. So, you know, know, they, if I, if I auditioned for Les Mis, I would be told by the casting agents, oh, there were no black people in French, in the French Revolution. And that's it. End of, end of career. So yeah, it was sad. I'm sad that I, that I didn't get the chance, mainly because of my race. You know, it was unfortunate because of course now with blind casting and things like Bridgeton, we don't see that anymore. But it's taken us a long time to get there.

Hunt:

It was in London, where Jones took his first steps as a human rights activist, joining protests against the UK’s notorious Section 28.

Jason Jones:

Section 28 was a law passed by Margaret Thatcher and the conservatives, which forbade the promotion of homosexuality, which in, in effect meant that libraries couldn't stock books. Teachers couldn't speak about it in schools, you know, it, it literally anything in the public domain that was funded by government you couldn't mention anything to do with homosexuality. Those marches I was studying at Birkbeck College at the time, and at the time, there were no LGBT groups at universities, even. So, I said to everybody, I said, you know, let's go and join the marches. And people were petrified to march. I mean, to identify yourself as was a huge deal back then. You have no idea. I, I mean, the, the first pride marches in, in London. We used to have police on either side of us protecting us from people. So, you know, it was a big deal to, to identify yourselves on a, on a march. And I just thought, you know what? I'm gonna go and do it myself. And that really was a kind of the moment when I realized that things are not gonna change unless you get up off your and go and march and get active and do stuff. And that was really kind of the, the, the fire to get me started. So, blame Margaret Thatcher.

Hunt:

Jones was also instrumental in the late 1990s in clearing the way for the foreign partners of gays and lesbians to legally reside in the UK, a victory that led to civil partnerships and then to marriage equality.

Jason Jones:

This was the first positive gay legislation in British history post decriminalization 67. So, again, you know, that was not my strategy, I was just part of the team. But, you know, that strategy was, oh, here is an existing piece of legislation which we can very simply attach ourselves to. And this was the partners the Overseas Partners Residency Act, which allowed the overseas partner of a British subject to come to Britain based on cohabitation, even if they're unmarried. And we said to labor, who, who was in opposition, Tony Blair at the time give us this, you are literally stroke of a pen. You don't need to go to parliament. It's the minister. Just insert same sex into this already existing legislation where we'll give you the gay vote. And lo and behold, three months after they swept into office in a landslide victory, they passed this legislation.

Hunt: Jones and his partner at the time, who was also from Trinidad and Tobago, were among 40 queer couples that tested and eventually expanded the scope of the law.

Jason Jones:

So every 28 days, we get a letter from the home office saying, you've been denied. Get out. We would then appeal that went on for two years. They held our passports and we couldn't travel. But when we did win, what the home office had were 40 stacks of proof that queer people had loving family relationships with each other. Before that there was nothing in law to show that queer people had had loving, lasting relationships before that they just thought we screwed each other in the bushes … and that led to civil Registry two years later, which was and they thought, they said to themselves, okay, well if they have these relationships, do you think they want to have the relationships registered? And we said, yes. So they did civil registry at seven town halls around the country.

Civil Registry was literally just a little document that said, I love you, you love me, blah, blah. And the mayor signed it. And that was, it had no legal ramifications whatsoever. But because so many queer people took it up, it then led to civil partnership, which then led to marriage equality. So that first instance of queer relationships being registered under law were interracial relationships, because nearly always the partner of the British subject was somebody of color, was a person of color. And that has been completely erased from queer history in the UK because again, we have a racism issue in the queer community. And what happens with queer people of color is not properly recognized within queer advocacy.

Hunt:

Although LGBTQ people were beginning to gain social acceptance and legal protections in the UK in the 1990s and 2000s, they faced hostility — even threats of violence — in Trinidad and Tobago. And AIDS was running rampant in the island nation, resulting in the second highest infection rate, per capita, in the world. 

In the mid-1990s, Jones was back in Trinidad and Tobago, where he founded the Lambda Group, the first LGBTQ advocacy group in the southern Caribbean. At the same time, he became the target of homophobic threats after performing in drag.

Jason Jones:

It was a, a full two, two hour long drag show. It was a character called Mercedes Growl, and she was a Trinidadian woman, and it was her telling her story through songs, and she was very specifically from a very specific part of Trinidad society that people could identify. And, you know, I was making fun of that. The scandal was, I was on the page of all the tabloids, and I mean, it was literally big red letters, homo, blah, blah, blah. And you know, that, that had never happened in Trinidad before. I mean, it was, it literally, <laugh> was the talking point of the, of the island for weeks. And because they didn't name me, but they said, you know, son of, of of famous newscaster, everybody knew who it was. After doing after the drag drama, I knew this was literally the end of life as I knew it. … I even had the queer community, you know, going against me because they <laugh> they don't like the boat being rocked, you know, especially the, the A-GAYs, you know, the rich queens who live in the glass closets, you know, they, they, they don't want this kind of attention. So I literally got it in the neck from everybody, from the evangelicals to the Muslims, to the Hindus, the queers. Everybody literally turned against me. 

It was soul destroying, especially, especially as, you know, there was no safety whatsoever. I mean, the, the American Embassy offered me their plane to get me off the island, but I knew at that point that if I did accept that it would, number one, reinforce a narrative that gay is a white man disease from the global North. And two, it would also kind of, you know, I didn't wanna be seen as this coward that dropped a bomb and then turned tail and, and ran at the first side side si sign of problems. So I, I literally had to ride it out. And it was yeah, awful. I mean, there were days and days that I would be locked in a hotel room, cheap hotel room, with no food, no access to anybody, because I was in hiding.

Hunt:

The violent backlash to Jones’ drag performance drove him back to London. But it also drove him into court, spurring his lawsuit against Trinidad and Tobago and its antigay Sexual Offences Act.

Ironically, that lawsuit now follows him to London, where the Judicial Committee of the Privy Council will decide its fate. A ruling in Jones’ favor could lead to the decriminalization of same sex intimacy in other commonwealth countries, potentially impacting millions of LGBTQ people in former UK colonies.

Jason Jones:

The thing with the JCPC is that even though they're white, middle British and sit in London, when they sit on a matter like this, it's as if they're sitting in Trinidad and Tobago. So they will, you know, they will be recognizing that this case is about what's happening in the Caribbean, but conversely also reflects on their judgements, you know? So it's one thing to say, oh, well, you know, throw our hands up. We have nothing to do. It's a savings clause, but it's another one to condemn LGBTQ plus people to a, a society that's endemically homophobic, using laws that you created. So it's, it's, it's gonna be a <laugh>, it's, it's gonna be a hard won battle, for sure.

Hunt:

For his part, Jones is ready to pass the torch of activism to the next generation, a generation he hopes to inspire to carry that torch proudly and bravely, as he was inspired by his mentors, among them Rex Lassalle, Nina Simone and the writer CLR James.

Sadly, on the afternoon I talked with Jones for this program, he was preparing to attend a memorial service for Lassalle, who died in Finland in February at the age of 79.

Jason Jones:

I've always had these elders that I looked up to that I always, I really valued what they brought to me, my fairy godfathers, you know, these were people that all shaped who I am, and I'm so grateful for how they shaped me. So, you know, for me, mentorship is the next big step and something that I, I, I can't see myself not doing.

Jason Jones:

I don't want to be here forever. I literally want to sling my hangup between two coconut trees and subpoena coladas and mentor. That's it. I do not want to be in the cut and thrust of advocacy anymore.

Hunt:

I’d like to thank Jason Jones for sharing his story for this feature. For Tell Me, David, I'm David Hunt.