Dear Editor,

Anti-LGBTQ activists have long argued that the LGBTQ agenda is nothing more than a gateway drug for the harder diabolical practices of paedophilia, incest, and zoophilia.

Some overzealous activists go so far as to add polygamy to the list of diabolical practices coming to a city or town near you. Why the good name of polygamy should be dragged into the hellish mud beside paedophilia, incest, and zoophilia defies reason. At least one of the Abrahamic faiths (Islam) openly embraces polygamy, while many of the spiritual giants of Judaism also dabbled in polyamorous love.

In his maiden visit to Barbados, Dr Umar Ifatunde (Johnson), American motivational speaker, psychologist, and activist, was adamant that paedophilia was the next ace up the sleeve of the Machiavellian destroyers of the black family. In support of his claim, Dr Ifatunde, quoting from a controversial statement crafted by the International Commission of Jurists (ICJ), implied that the statement’s goal was to ultimately decriminalise sex with minors.

The controversial ICJ statement voiced the opinion that sexual conduct involving people below the domestically prescribed minimum age of consent to sex may be consensual in fact, but not in law. The statement went on to say that the enforcement of criminal law should reflect the rights and capacity of people under 18 years of age to make decisions about engaging in consensual sexual conduct and their right to be heard in matters concerning them. The statement further added that pursuant to their evolving capacities and progressive autonomy, people under the age of 18 should participate in decisions affecting them with due regard to their age, maturity, and best interests.

This statement has been interpreted by many as the first major experimental breach in the laws protecting children from sexual abuse globally. Critics of the statement argue that the position taken by the ICJ favours the decriminalisation of all sexual activity, including sexual activity between adults and children. Dr Ifatunde alluded to this interpretation of the statement when he opined that once a minor consents to sexual activity, there could be no legal recourse to holding an adult criminally liable for having sex with a minor if the statement were to be adopted universally.

The ICJ has subsequently pushed back against its detractors. In a statement issued on April 20, 2023, the ICJ sought to debunk the notion that its statement was an all-out call for the decriminalisation of sex with children or an argument in favour of the abolition of domestically prescribed minimum age of consent to sex. The ICJ also pointed out that its statement was limited to close-in-range adolescents and not to sexual relations between adults and children.

The ICJ is of the opinion that the global community needs greater clarity on the issue of adolescent sexuality, especially in an age when close to half of the adolescents in the world are sexually active before the age of 18. Compounding the problem is the fact that in many countries there is a discrepancy between the age of consent and the age at which a young person can get married. As of June 2023, six states in the US do not have a statutory minimum age when all exemptions were taken into account. In Europe, Belgium, France, Finland, Greece, Ireland, Luxembourg, and Slovenia do not have a minimum age requirement for marriage.

From a purely legal perspective, anyone contracting a marriage in a jurisdiction without a minimum age requirement could be in legal jeopardy when consummating the marriage if the bride is below the minimum age of consent. Under current minimum age consent laws, a 17- or 18-year-old commits an act of statutory rape by having sex with his girlfriend who may be 15 or 16. These are the kinds of anomalies the ICJ statement seeks to address, according to spokespersons for the ICJ.

Critics, and perhaps many of the 400 plus Barbadians who turned out to hear Dr Ifatunde at the Bay Street Esplanade, remain clearly unmoved in their belief that a well-orchestrated plot is afoot to radically reconfigure the traditional global moral landscape, replacing it with a hedonistic, God-hating, Satan-affirming culture in which anything goes, including paedophilia, incest, zoophilia and — heaven help us — polygamy. Dr Ifatunde’s concerns, however, centred on the impact gender reconfiguration surgery and the gay and lesbian lifestyle was having on black demographics globally. The Save our Children crusade is on and may, therefore, be going into hyperdrive in Barbados, the Caribbean, Africa, and the rest of the black diaspora.

Lenrod Nzulu Baraka

Founder of Afro-Caribbean Spiritual Teaching Center

rodneynimrod2@gmail.com