By Shermain Bique-Charles
President of the Antigua and Barbuda Council of Church Leaders and Head of The Christian Ministries Center, Bishop Charlesworth Browne has turned down an invitation to an Intimate Conviction Convention in Barbados with three words — “no thank you”.
The organisers of the conference invited pastors, bishops and priests to the gathering to discuss anti-buggery laws in the Caribbean.
Apparently, the Barbadian organisers, Fr Sean Major-Campbell and Fr Clifford Hall, said they note with alarm the heightened and sometimes hostile anti-LGBT rhetoric that is being generated by some religious leaders across the Caribbean, which is in response to current and impending challenges to regional anti-sodomy laws.
According to them, as people of faith “we believe that Christians should show the world how to respectfully disagree and we are therefore troubled that some of the language being used by clerics who oppose decriminalisation will incite violence against LGBT people”.
As such, the organisers are urging all Caribbean bishops, pastors and priests to exercise restraint, even if they express their opposition to ending laws that criminalise consensual same-sex intimacy.
But Bishop Browne told OBSERVER media that he has no interest in any such conference, since his position on the topic will not change.
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