(LifeSiteNews) — The Eastern Caribbean Supreme Court struck down St. Lucia’s colonial-era law that criminalized homosexual acts.
The court ruled that the mostly Christian Caribbean island nation’s “buggery” and “gross indecency” laws, which carried prison terms of up to 10 years, were unconstitutional.
A Saint Lucia court has struck down a law that criminalized same-sex relations.
Previously, same-sex activity was punishable with up to 10 years in prison. pic.twitter.com/I45madTBtF
— Pop Crave (@PopCrave) July 30, 2025
St. Lucia joins Antigua and Barbuda, St. Kitts and Nevis, Barbados, and Dominica, which in recent years have decriminalized consensual homosexual acts.
Homosexual acts remain officially outlawed in five Caribbean nations: Grenada, Guyana, Jamaica, St. Vincent and the Grenadines, and Trinidad and Tobago.
In March, an appeals court in the Republic of Trinidad and Tobago restored a previous law that held consensual homosexual acts to be illegal.
In restoring the law, the court tempered it by reducing the maximum sentence from 25 years to five years.
The three-judge appeals court panel overturned a 2018 High Court ruling that had deemed portions of the country’s Sexual Offences Act to be unconstitutional.
The judges reasoned that changing the Trinidad and Tobago law is the job of the island nation’s legislature, not its judiciary.
Although the numbers have long been dropping, 64 nations around the globe still have laws on the books criminalizing homosexual acts.
“The total had dropped to 63 before Trinidad and Tobago‘s Court of Appeal reinstated the country’s buggery and gross indecency laws in March 2025 and the West African nation of Mali, which formerly had no anti-LGBT law, adopted a homophobic new penal code in December 2024,” according a list maintained by the watchdog site, 76crimes.com.
“Before that, the most recent countries to have repealed their anti-gay laws were Namibia in Africa, Dominica in the Caribbean, Mauritius in the Indian Ocean, the Cook Islands and Niue in the South Pacific, Singapore in Southeast Asia, Antigua and Barbuda, Saint Kitts and Nevis, and Barbados in the Caribbean, Bhutan in the Himalayas, and Gabon in central Africa,” the site noted.
