By: Staff Writer
August 5, 2025
The Eastern Caribbean Supreme Court (ECSC) struck down anti-gay sex laws in St Lucia, leaving gay rights advocates ecstatic.
Last week the ECSC found that the island’s so-called buggery and gross indecency laws, which criminalised consensual anal sex, were unconstitutional.
The Eastern Caribbean Alliance for Diversity and Equality (ECADE), announced in 2019 that they were launching five legal challenges to the remnants of draconian laws of our colonial past. The claims, all filed before the end of 2019, challenged the buggery and indecency laws in Barbados, Saint Kitts and Nevis, Antigua and Barbuda, Grenada and Saint Lucia.
Barbados, Antigua and Barbuda and Saint Kitts and Nevis all struck down similar laws prohibiting gay sex in 2022, and Dominica also decriminalized same-sex acts last year.
Raise Your Voice St. Lucia, a nonprofit organization, called it a “monumental step for human rights in the Eastern Caribbean.”
“It comes as a beacon of hope amid recent setbacks, such as disappointments in St. Vincent and the Grenadines as well as Trinidad and Tobago, that have tested our region’s commitment to equality,” the group said.
The court’s decision is the result of a sustained, courageous legal challenge by both local plaintiffs and regional advocacy groups, including the Eastern Caribbean Alliance for Diversity and Equality (ECADE) and United and Strong.
Notably, the court held that “public humiliation, vilification and even physical attacks on homosexuals would be a concomitant effect of the stigmatization created by the criminalisation of such conduct. It can hardly be said that such eventualities are in keeping with the dignity of certain categories of citizens and are in accordance with evolving standards of decency in a free and democratic society.”
Speaking to reporters at a press conference after the judgment, attorney Veronica Cenac, who worked on the case, said it was important to remember the origin of the laws.
“Many persons believe that [they are] a part of our cultural identity and that those persons who are asking for their repeal are promoting a western, global north agenda – which is clearly not the case considering that these laws were imposed on us during colonial times,” she said.
In St Lucia, the law penalised gay sex with up to 10 years in prison. While the government did not enforce the law, activists and legal experts say it remained a threat to the island’s LGBTQ+ community.