Recently, the minister with responsibility for information, Senator Sandrea Falconer said the government is to take the matter of the review of the buggery law to the Parliament shortly.

In the lead up to the general elections in 2011 Prime Minister Portia Simpson Miller said she would support a conscience vote in the House of Representatives on reviewing the buggery law.

A prominent attorney-at-law is urging that the conscience vote for the review of the law be done with the views of the members of the constituency taken into consideration, rather than the vote solely being made by the parliamentarians.

Shirley Richards wants the voting to be done with the views of the constituency and that these votes should be made public.

"They (parliamentarians) shouldn't be voting on their own conscience. They are representing the people. We want to know how the representatives in parliament vote on this issue. The people should know how their representatives vote," she said.

Referendum

Another legal luminary, Bert Samuels, explained that it certainly will be interesting to see how the parliamentarians vote on this issue. He also said that having a referendum on this matter would represent the highest form of democracy.

"I think there will be a toss-up between fundamentalist Christian values on one side and the liberals on another. Having a referendum on this matter would display the highest form of democracy," he said.

In the meantime, the Supreme Court will on June 25 hear an application challenging the constitutionality of the buggery law.

The claim was filed by the United States-based advocacy group AIDS-Free World on behalf of Jamaican Javed Jaghai. It is being argued by the group that under the Charter of Fundamental Rights, it is illegal to enforce the anti-sodomy law as it breaches the right to privacy.

In the lead-up to the court hearing, a church group has plans for a large anti-gay march scheduled to take place on June 23. The group is also calling on other denominations to support them in this march.