By Javone Vickerie | HGP Nightly News|
GEORGETOWN, GUYANA — As the local LGBTQIA+ community marks its annual Pride celebrations, the message reverberating across the capital city is clear: Pride in Guyana is still fundamentally a protest, not just a party.
Joel Simpson, founder and Managing Director of the Society Against Sexual Orientation Discrimination (SASOD) Guyana, emphasized that while public support and social acceptance have reached historic highs, the country’s legislative framework remains stubbornly frozen in the past.
Guyana holds a unique position in regional history, having become the first English-speaking Caribbean nation to host an open, public Pride parade—a bold move that subsequently inspired matching movements in Trinidad and Tobago, Barbados, and across the wider region. Grassroots public education campaigns like Guyana Together have also successfully mobilized a growing network of parents, corporate allies, and civil society groups advocating for equal rights. Yet, Simpson maintains that this visible social progress is completely detached from state policy.
“It is a protest because we still, in 2026, are advocating for laws which criminalize same-sex intimacy to be repealed,” Simpson stated code-blue. “We still don’t have laws that protect us from discrimination. We are not seeing the institutional change, the legal change, the systemic change, or the policy change to match the social change that we’re experiencing.”
SASOD’s 2026 Legislative Priorities for Equality
To align the laws of Guyana with contemporary human rights standards, SASOD has outlined two urgent legislative actions for parliamentarians before the conclusion of the 2026 legislative year:
- Repeal of Sections 351–353: These specific clauses within the Criminal Law (Offences) Act criminalize consensual same-sex intimacy between adults. They stand as the very last remaining statutes on Guyana’s law books that directly penalize citizens based on sexual orientation.
- Amendment of the Prevention of Discrimination Act 1997: As Guyana’s lone piece of ordinary anti-discrimination legislation, this statute currently protects citizens based on race, sex, and religion, but leaves a glaring legal vacuum regarding the queer community. SASOD is demanding an immediate amendment to explicitly prohibit discrimination based on sexual orientation, gender identity, and gender expression within workplaces and public spaces.
The Political Baseline: The People’s Progressive Party/Civic (PPP/C) administration formally committed in its national manifesto to outlawing discrimination based on sexual orientation. However, with the current term advancing, advocates argue the statutory amendment is a straightforward line correction that requires immediate parliamentary scheduling rather than further political stalling.
SASOD is aggressively pushing for these amendments to be passed by the National Assembly before the end of 2026, arguing that the law must finally reflect the reality of the compassionate, accepting society Guyana is actively becoming. Until the state updates its legal frameworks to protect every citizen, regardless of whom they love, the rainbow flags flying over Georgetown will continue to serve as banners of an ongoing battle for basic constitutional protections.
