Anthony Hall
Avisiting pastor, who is also an attorney-at-law, says religious leaders and their church members should be able to speak freely about their objections to same sex marriage and LGBT issues. (LGBT stands for lesbian, gay, bisexual and transgender”.) He made the statement while referring to the section of the Anguilla Constitution on freedom of expression and assembly.
He charged that proponents of, and those actually involved in, such lifestyles, did not want to be interfered with, but he stressed that religious liberty afforded persons, of different beliefs, the right to speak out against them.
The speaker, Pastor Anthony Hall, a long-standing Seventh-day Adventist Minister at the Caribbean Union level, as well as a lawyer and a member of the Barbados Bar Association, was at the time addressing a meeting at the Church of God (Holiness) in Anguilla on Saturday evening, June 1. He recently addressed members of the SDA community following which the Anguilla Evangelical Association, whose President is Pastor Philip Gumbs, invited him to speak at a later date with the Association’s congregations.
It was at that meeting, on the above date, that Pastor Hall spoke on the subject “Religious Liberty and LGBT Issues” during a power point presentation. He acknowledged that persons were free to do want they wanted with their lifestyles, but said there must be limits to such actions in a civilised society – and in accordance with the law of God. He stressed that religious liberty gave other persons the right to “think religiously; speak religiously; assemble with people who believe as they do; and should not be told to shut up.”
He emphasised that the Marriage Act in Anguilla stated that a marriage meant the union of a man and a woman, as husband and wife, and that no Pastor or Minister had any licence to perform a same sex marriage.
Pastor Hall made reference to a recent document which showed that the Foreign Affairs Committee, a cross-party group in the House of Commons, had recommended that the UK Government should request the Overseas Territories to set a date for same sex marriage. If not, an Order in Council should be introduced in the UK Parliament to enforce that requirement.
“Well, there is good news and not such good news,” he commented, recalling that it was said at a Government of Anguilla press conference that, according to a recent document, the UK Government “has no plans to introduce an Order in Council on this issue [of same sex marriage or LGTB rights in the Overseas Territories].”
Pastor Hall pointed out, however, that the UK Government said that while it was working to encourage nine territories that had already put in place arrangements to recognise and protect same sex relationships to do so, it “was continuing to engage with all the Overseas Territories to ensure that their legislation is compliant with their international human rights obligations.” He sought to explain that this meant that same sex marriage and LGBT rights were still very much on the UK Government’s timetable.
The document, to which he referred, is a report entitled “Global Britain and the Overseas Territories: Resetting the relationship.”
