The Tribune

By RASHAD ROLLE

Tribune Staff Reporter

rrolle@tribunemeda.net

MICAL MP V Alfred Gray said the fourth constitutional referendum bill has been “hijacked by the religious community.”

Speaking to reporters outside Cabinet yesterday, he also weighed in on the contentious debate surrounding transgender people in the country, saying even if a man or a woman undergoes a sex change, they are still their original sex.

“We’re too smart a people to let a few foolish people tell us sex means male or female but it opens the door to same-sex marriage,” he said about critics of the fourth bill.

Among those people who oppose the fourth bill are Marco City MP Greg Moss, former Court of Appeal President Joan Sawyer and Grace Community Church Senior Pastor Lyall Bethel.

A group of pastors behind the Save Our Bahamas committee have also launched a campaign against bill four over fears it will lead to gay marriage.

Like other prominent officials who support a ‘yes’ vote for the referendum, Mr Gray said he believes the failure to pass the fourth bill would lead to same-sex marriage rather than prevent it.

“All the bill says or seeks to do is define the word sex,” he said. “In Section 15 of the Constitution it says no one should be discriminated against on the basis of religion, creed, some other words, and sex. But it did not say in the Constitution presently what sex means. This bill seeks to define sex as male or female. I do not understand how same-sex marriage gets involved in this.

“People are too smart in the Bahamas to accept that if they read the bill, that it would lead to same-sex marriage. Allow me to say this; if we do not vote for it, that’s where the door gets opened to same-sex marriage because I can see some people going to the courts not long after to test it. And because the Constitution is the supreme law of the Bahamas, if we don’t have in the Constitution what sex means, the court will be left to interpret it. And if you have a liberal court that interprets it to mean a change of your gender by operation, a change of your gender by some impostors feel where if you feel like you’re a man, you’re a man, (then it could lead to same-sex marriage.)”

With unprecedented visibility, the transgender community has recently come forward to seek respect and greater acceptance within the Bahamian community.

Mr Gray, however, dismissed their points of view as he suggested they are confused about their true nature.

“A man is a man at birth,” he said. “A woman is a woman at birth. You can have as much operations as your money can allow, but you can’t change what God has done. And if we do not say male or female in the Constitution, trust me, somebody will hear me and live to regret it.

“You cannot change male or female by operation. You can have sex change if you want but if at birth you were male, that’s what you are. If at birth you were female, that’s what you are and always will be. You may prefer women; you may prefer men; you may prefer to be a man or you may prefer to be a woman; but it’s what you are not your preference and all of us were born something, that’s man or woman.”