After Human Rights Watch released a report on discrimination against lesbian, gay, bisexual and transgender (LGBT) people and buggery laws in the Eastern Caribbean, a government minister from Barbados warned against “an attempt to transpose and to transplant a foreign culture into Barbados called same-sex marriage.”

According to news reports, Steve Blackett, Minister of Social Care, Constituency Empowerment and Community Development in Barbados, took issue with the report, which focused on Barbados and six other Eastern Caribbean countries. In an address to the ruling Democratic Labour Party (DLP) he fumed against “external forces and internal forces” that he claimed were seeking acceptance of same-sex marriage.

It is a cheap trick, often used in politics, to rally against something that has not been proposed. The report “I Have to Leave to Be Me” focuses on the region’s buggery laws, and how in Barbados same-sex activity between consenting adults is punishable by life imprisonment. Although the buggery law is rarely enforced, its mere existence emboldens people to harass and discriminate against LGBT people, while the police respond inadequately to LGBT people’s complaints. As the minister himself notes, “They are our relatives, our family or friends, our kith and kin, our hairdressers, our tailors.”