I grew up on a farm in Retreat, St Mary. My father reared pigs and chickens and grew coconuts. My mother operated a hairdressing salon in St Ann’s Bay. She would open our home to tourists as part of the “Meet the People” community tourism programme implemented in the 1970s by the Government of Jamaica.

We moved to Kingston when I was older. That was a difficult adjustment for me, especially having to attend the private Roman Catholic preparatory school in which I was enrolled. I was neither christened nor raised Roman Catholic, and the rituals were laborious for me to understand and appreciate. So I also had to learn to temper my patience not to be completely overwhelmed.

I was christened in the Presbyterian church. Growing up, my parents believed in God and taught me to be grateful ever to “him”, yet they were not ritualistic churchgoers.

My father, God rest his soul, was a simple man who neither inherited wealth nor did he “make it” in life by today’s metric of success. He was content with having a cup of coffee in the morning, buying the Daily Gleaner, and watching the evening news on JBC.

Although he went to a Roman Catholic high school, he never felt indoctrinated by religion, but he lived daily by one principle, which was “the golden rule”, and taught me to do the same.

“Lisa, no one is lesser than you. You must always treat people respectfully and in the way you want to be treated.”

He would insist, too: “Never ask someone to do something that you are not prepared to do yourself; no task is too menial for you.”

These principles were the value propositions that guided who my father was; the man who gave me a cherry tree in an old Berger paint pan when I passed my Common Entrance Examination for high school as my gift.

My mother, on the other hand, is more spiritual. She communes with the universe and believes all of us have the power to, through our spirit, magnetise or emit positive life force energy. My mother is the one who taught me about the power of my spoken word, and that my subconscious does not have a sense of humour. Therefore, I must be careful about what I feed my conscious mind and the words I speak out loud.

My parents served me well by instilling critical value systems that have built my character. However, we live in a society that is predominantly Christian, based on the first invasion of the Spanish and then the subsequent British conquest, which brought the Church of England with it. Therefore, the majority of our population has been taught and believe that Jesus is the son of God, and no one can enter the Kingdom of Heaven if they don’t proclaim this and accept him into their life as their Lord and Saviour.

I often ask myself, what if the Ottoman Empire invaded Jamaica, the Ming Dynasty, or one of the Mughal Emperors? What would be our predominant religion? Islam, Hinduism, Buddhism, or none?

Often, I ask Christians in Jamaica the same question as a means of promoting tolerance and teaching a bit of history in the process about how religion has been the source of devastating wars we have seen over time.

Many of our laws were inspired by or through the Christian religion. Fortunately, some have been discarded or amended, such as those surrounding our women and their spousal rights and ownership of property.

Sadly, even though the laws have been amended, we still have a long way to go, as many of our socio-cultural practices still hold on to some of these views. For example, for some husbands, women are still their ‘property’. This type of mindset is perhaps why some in our health-care system say women need their husbands’ permission if they want tubal ligation.

Legislation that I am pleased we now have is that a husband can now be criminally charged for raping his wife. Yes, that existed in Jamaica, where a husband’s marital rape of his wife had to be proved.

When the law was originally passed in 2009, certain conditions had to be met for a wife to claim her husband raped her. The burden was on her to prove it.

However, these burdens were eliminated in the amendments made to the Offences Against the Person Act and the Sexual Offences Act in 2020, and related statutes, setting the stage for husbands to be criminally charged for raping their wives.

The joint select committee of Parliament that deliberated the amendments recommended that once a woman withheld her consent for sex in a relationship, irrespective of whether it appears in marriage or not, it was to be considered rape.

Furthermore, married women who are raped by their husbands will no longer have to fulfil certain conditions to qualify for legislative protection.

Yet, there were some religious extremists who were — and still are — seriously uncomfortable as they believe marriage gives unconditional, unequivocal, and wholesome consent in sexual affairs between a man and his wife.

Six church groups and other Christian lobbies cautioned legislators back in 2017 not to tamper with the ‘sanctity’ of marriage by imposing stricter marital rape laws.

Some of these churches and groups included the Jamaica Union of Seventh-Day Adventists and the Church of God of Jamaica, the Jamaica Evangelical Alliance, Independent Churches, the Jamaica Pentecostal Union, the Jamaica Association of Full Gospel Churches, and the Jamaica Coalition for a Healthy Society.

A representative, Philippa Davies, told the joint parliamentary committee reviewing the Sexual Offences Act and related laws that “marriage [already] presumes consent for sex by both parties”. She added: “This is why… rape in marriage, that is non-consensual sex, is conceptually challenging because of the inherent presumption of consent.”

Therefore, since sexual intercourse is defined in our laws as the entrance of the penis to the vagina, if we were to follow some Christian groups and lobbyists with their logic or total biblical governance for married couples, then it would only be unmarried women that could be raped in Jamaica.

Watching and hearing some of the churches and Christian lobby groups make these arguments upon hearing the amendments further confirmed in my mind why we must keep Church and State separated.

Jamaica is not a theocracy, and I am grateful. In countries that currently rule theocratically, that is where government leaders are members of the clergy, and the State’s legal system is based on religious law, the freedom and reproductive rights of women suffer.

As a legislator, I have the duty to protect Jamaica and its citizens from harm’s way and create a society in which they can thrive with progressive laws.

The Church has the duty to win souls for Christ through moral and spiritual arguments using the Bible as its guide.

All Jamaican women must have the right to protect and do what is in the best interest of their bodies, married or unmarried, devout Christian or not.

Lisa Hanna is Member of Parliament for St Ann South Eastern, People’s National Party spokesperson on foreign affairs and foreign trade, and a former Cabinet member