SAN JUAN, Puerto Rico (AP) — A final court of appeals in England struck down a centuries-old gay sex ban in Trinidad and Tobago in a ruling on Tuesday that activists around the world celebrated.
The ruling ended a nearly 10-year battle for gay rights in the twin-island nation and cannot be appealed.
“Those laws cannot be regarded as reasonably justifiable in a society that has a proper respect for the rights and freedom of the individual,” said Judge Philip James Sales of the Judicial Committee of the Privy Council.
In February 2017, Jason Jones filed the case, arguing that so-called “buggery” laws dating from when Trinidad and Tobago was a British colony are unconstitutional. The laws that call for up to five years in prison have not been enforced in recent history, but critics say they still send a message.
In an interview with The Associated Press on Tuesday, Jones said he was celebrating what he called a “stunning victory.”
He described himself as “a very angry gay man” and said he used that anger to power himself through the case as it made its way through the courts for almost a decade.
“Society has treated me worse than a criminal,” he said. “There is a real sense of vindication with this judgment. Finally, the courts are seeing that they need to step up because our politicians are so toothless.”
Jones, who has been openly gay since age 16, left Trinidad and Tobago in 1996 because of what he described as homophobic violence and discrimination. He said he was a singer in church as well as an actor and a dancer.
“Anybody along those lines who was not following the macho rules was treated as a pariah,” he recalled.
He told the AP that he was inspired to speak out after losing friends to HIV/AIDS and after meeting Nina Simone, the American singer, songwriter, composer and civil rights activist, who had traveled to the twin-island nation in 1984 for Carnival. He said he was 19 and spent three weeks with her.
“Nina was the one who said, ‘Jason, get off this rock and go see the world,’” he recalled, calling it a defining, life-changing experience.
Tuesday's ruling was live-streamed, with Sales reading part of the unanimous decision.
“The current understanding of the fundamental individual right to respect for private and family life is that it protects such a core part of human identity, as one’s sexual orientation and the sexual activities carried on in private between consenting adults to give expression to that identity,” Sales said. “Laws which seek to criminalize such activities cannot be justified.”
Jones said he loves his country and is not angry with its people, but rather its laws.
“To discriminate against somebody simply because of who they choose to love is simply ridiculous,” he said by phone, adding that the ruling is a stepping stone in the fight for equality. “Why do people feel they have the right to pass judgment on anybody else?”
Those who opposed Jones include Trinidad and Tobago’s government, the country’s Council of Evangelical Churches and its largest Hindu organization, Sanatan Dharma Maha Sabha.
Trinidad's attorney general did not immediately return messages seeking comment. Meanwhile, the Council of Evangelical Churches said it did not have immediate comment.
In April 2018, Trinidad’s High Court found the laws unconstitutional, but a local appeals court partially reversed that ruling in March 2025. Trinidad’s Court of Appeals later allowed Jones to seek a ruling from the Privy Council in England. Trinidad and Tobago is a sovereign republic within the British Commonwealth and still uses London’s Judicial Committee of the Privy Council as its highest court of final appeal. However, the country has pushed for the Trinidad-based Caribbean Court of Justice to replace the Privy Council.
Trinidad and Tobago’s government sought a ruling that would uphold the March 2025 ruling. A majority of justices in 2025 found that the High Court erred by allowing judges to change a law. A provision in some Caribbean constitutions protects colonial laws from legal challenges, including in Trinidad and Tobago.
Caribbean nations with so-called buggery laws still on the books include Grenada, Jamaica and St. Vincent and the Grenadines.
Meanwhile, the Bahamas decriminalized homosexuality in 1991, and the U.K. government repealed such laws in 2001 in Anguilla, the British Virgin Islands, the Cayman Islands, Montserrat and the Turks and Caicos Islands. Elsewhere in the Caribbean, judges have recently struck down similar laws in Barbados, Dominica, St. Lucia and Antigua and Barbuda.
Associated Press reporter Anselm Gibbs in Port-of-Spain, Trinidad contributed to this report.
FILE - The national flag of Trinidad and Tobago, is set with the Flags of the Commonwealth countries being hung along The Mall in London, Thursday, April 12, 2018. (AP Photo/Kirsty Wigglesworth, FIle)
WASHINGTON (AP) — Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth dug in for a fight Tuesday against his potential impeachment in Congress, contending that a rogue lawmaker is undermining American troops in war zones by targeting him over mere “policy disagreements” and not the high crimes required in the Constitution for his possible removal.
The embattled Pentagon chief has launched a counteroffensive against outgoing Republican Rep. Thomas Massie’s effort to force him from office over his handling of the unpopular Iran war and other actions. A House vote on whether to move forward with the impeachment is expected later Tuesday.
Hegseth gave a defiant and politicized defense of his stewardship of the U.S. military in his first news conference at the Pentagon in six months. He chose to hit back at the rising bipartisan anger over battlefield strategy while offering few details about intermittent operations against Iran or fatal strikes on alleged drug-smuggling boats in Latin America.
President Donald Trump praised Hegseth’s performance at the briefing in a social media post, while Vice President JD Vance said in his own post that the impeachment effort is “a ridiculous show that stands in for actual policymaking.”
Hegseth framed the effort to oust him as an indictment against the nation’s service members and their successes while undermining American forces “in real time.”
“This is not patriotism,” Hegseth said. “This is sabotage.”
Hegseth said the impeachment resolution “tells our enemies — Iran, the cartels, every adversary watching — the United States will actually punish its own warriors and its own civilian leadership for successfully executing lawful military operations.”
Massie, who lost his primary in Kentucky to a Trump-backed opponent, filed the resolution in the House on Monday. It sets the stage for a dramatic vote on whether to remove a key Trump Cabinet member following sweeping losses for Republicans in last week's midterm elections, which many at least partly blamed on the Iran conflict and its economic impact.
The resolution largely focuses on the war in Iran but also includes references to Hegseth’s role in military actions in Yemen against Iranian-backed Houthi rebels and Venezuela. Massie said Hegseth’s actions amount to “high crimes and misdemeanors” and his leadership at the Pentagon “warrants impeachment.”
“The law requires our military to withdraw from hostilities within 60 days if Congress does not authorize the activity,” Massie wrote on social media Tuesday. The Iran war "has been underway for 256 days. Congress has not authorized it. Hegseth is breaking the law."
Hegseth said Massie’s concerns are not impeachable, calling them “policy disagreements, not high crimes, not misdemeanors, not treason, not bribery, not the kinds of offenses the founders intended when they wrote the impeachment clause.”
What constitutes “high crimes and misdemeanors” is not spelled out in the Constitution, leaving it to lawmakers to decide what are impeachable acts. A vote in the House could come by midweek, putting pressure on Republicans — many of whom blamed their election wipeout on the fallout from the Iran war — but next steps are highly uncertain.
Hegseth also condemned the effort as “a political spectacle, a personal manifesto driven by ego and resentment.”
House Speaker Mike Johnson called it a “political gambit for attention” and predicted that Republicans would defeat it “one way or the other.”
Hegseth cast Massie's resolution in historic terms, arguing that no defense secretary has been impeached in the nation's 250-year history “for carrying out lawful military operations.”
But more recently, a Cabinet official in President Joe Biden's administration, Homeland Security Secretary Alejandro Mayorkas, was impeached by House Republicans over his handling of the U.S.-Mexico border. But the Senate dismissed all impeachment charges, shutting down his trial before arguments even began.
Mayorkas, who did not appear to testify before the impeachment proceedings, put the border crisis squarely on Congress for failing to update immigration laws during a time of global migration. Senate Majority Leader Chuck Schumer had said then, in April 2024, that House Republicans’ charges failed to meet “the high standard of high crimes and misdemeanors” and could set a dangerous precedent.
Before Mayorkas, a sitting Cabinet secretary had never been impeached. It was nearly 150 years ago that the House voted to impeach President Ulysses S. Grant’s war secretary, William Belknap, over a kickback scheme in government contracts. He resigned before the vote.
Trump has backed Hegseth in the wake of Massie's impeachment resolution, pointing to the U.S. military raid to capture then-Venezuelan President Nicolás Maduro in January as well as operations against Iran that he asserts have “obliterated” its navy and air force.
“Pete Hegseth gets an “A” PLUS, PLUS, PLUS for his defense against a disgruntled, angry, defeated, former Congressman, Thomas Massie, a TOTAL LOSER!” Trump wrote Tuesday on Truth Social.
Iran, however, has been able to keep striking U.S. military bases in the Middle East and has disrupted shipping in the Strait of Hormuz during the more than 8-month-old conflict, driving up global oil prices.
Trump told reporters Monday that the Iran war “militarily is effectively over" and repeated his often-made claim that Tehran “would love to make a deal.”
Besides public comments, Hegseth also has been defending his leadership of the U.S. military in a social media blitz. He released a video last week arguing impeachment would be “all about the politics of personal destruction” and that “won’t work with me.”
Scores of Pentagon political appointees have posted images of Hegseth emblazoned with the words, “Stand. Fight. Defend the Republic.” It's a message that official Pentagon social media accounts continued to send this week.
Associated Press writer Steve Peoples in New York and Lisa Mascaro in Washington contributed to this report.
Rep. Thomas Massie, R-Ky., speaks outside of the Capitol about articles of impeachment he introduced against Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth, Monday, Nov. 9, 2026, in Washington. (AP Photo/Allison Robbert)
Rep. Thomas Massie, R-Ky., speaks outside of the Capitol about articles of impeachment he introduced against Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth, Monday, Nov. 9, 2026, in Washington. (AP Photo/Allison Robbert)
Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth speaks during a press conference at the Pentagon in Washington, Tuesday, Nov. 10, 2026. (AP Photo/Nathan Howard)
Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth speaks during a press conference at the Pentagon in Washington, Tuesday, Nov. 10, 2026. (AP Photo/Nathan Howard)
Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth speaks during a press conference at the Pentagon in Washington, Tuesday, Nov. 10, 2026. (AP Photo/Nathan Howard)
Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth speaks during a press conference at the Pentagon in Washington, Tuesday, Nov. 10, 2026. (AP Photo/Nathan Howard)
Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth speaks during a press conference at the Pentagon in Washington, Tuesday, Nov. 10, 2026. (AP Photo/Nathan Howard)
FILE - Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth speaks at an event for Anduril Industries, Inc., at Sparrows Point Shipyard, Oct. 6, 2026, in Sparrows Point, Md. (AP Photo/Julia Demaree Nikhinson, File)
FILE - Secretary of Defense Pete Hegseth waits to welcome Britain's Defense Secretary Wes Streeting to the Pentagon during an arrival ceremony, Thursday, Oct 15, 2026, in Washington. (AP Photo/Manuel Balce Ceneta, File)
