Ro­man Catholic (RC) Arch­bish­op Joseph Har­ris is call­ing on cit­i­zens to re­sist moves to ac­cept ho­mo­sex­u­al­i­ty. He is the lat­est re­li­gious leader to speak out against what he de­scribed as so­ci­ety's in­creas­ing ac­cep­tance of same-sex re­la­tion­ships. His com­ments come in the wake of the gov­ern­ment's new na­tion­al gen­der pol­i­cy, which promis­es to pro­mote fair­ness and equal­i­ty among cit­i­zens.

"We are copy­cats in T&T. We look at the US and what they do and want to do it too. But one of the things no­body thinks about is struc­ture and the im­por­tance of it," Arch­bish­op Har­ris said. "If we fa­cil­i­tate sin­ful struc­tures, which are against God's law, we are teach­ing our young peo­ple that it's okay to lead a sin­ful life. We must turn back to God."

Har­ris was speak­ing yes­ter­day dur­ing an in­ter­view with the T&T Guardian, at a fam­i­ly day host­ed by the Catholic Arch­dio­cese of T&T at the Queen's Park Sa­van­nah, Port-of-Spain. On Fri­day, sev­er­al faith- and com­mu­ni­ty-based groups op­posed to the na­tion­al gen­der pol­i­cy held a press con­fer­ence to ad­dress the is­sue. The re­li­gious groups be­lieve the pro­posed gen­der pol­i­cy seeks to re­de­fine the term gen­der and will pave the way to le­galise same-sex re­la­tion­ships and abor­tion.

Min­is­ter of Gen­der, Youth and Child De­vel­op­ment Ver­na St Rose-Greaves has voiced her sup­port for gay rights and abor­tion. Har­ris said while he is not against ho­mo­sex­u­als, he is against the act, which he de­scribed as sin­ful. "Our church teach­es you to love the sin­ner but hate the sin. The world has pro­gressed in all sorts of ways. Men have gone to the moon. But now peo­ple have be­gun to think that we can do with­out God. That is the prob­lem, we can­not do with­out God."

Har­ris warned that T&T would be go­ing down "a dan­ger­ous path" if same-sex mar­riages were made le­gal. While ac­knowl­edg­ing that the RC church needs to play a more in­te­gral role in pro­mot­ing moral and spir­i­tu­al val­ues, Har­ris said se­ri­ous di­a­logue with the gov­ern­ment is nec­es­sary to ad­dress so­cial ills. "We are not go­ing to get rid of crime just like that. We must be­gin with ed­u­ca­tion in which the sa­cred­ness of the hu­man per­son is taught.

"Too many young peo­ple are leav­ing school il­lit­er­ate. These youths have an in­fe­ri­or­i­ty com­plex, so if the gang lead­ers are the ones big­ging them up, who will they fol­low?" Ear­li­er, in de­liv­er­ing his ser­mon, the Arch­bish­op en­cour­aged the con­gre­ga­tion to lead Christ­like lives and be an ex­am­ple to oth­ers.

"It is against this back­ground of the he­roes of our faith who nev­er mis­rep­re­sent­ed Christ that we seek to re­vive and to cel­e­brate this year, the 50th of our in­de­pen­dence...We make Christ tru­ly present amongst our peo­ple. We all ex­pe­ri­ence Christ's sav­ing pres­ence and love."

The con­cert, which be­gan at 10 am, was a fam­i­ly af­fair and thou­sands braved heavy rain to at­tend. Ac­tiv­i­ties for chil­dren, such as boun­cy cas­tles and face paint­ing, as well as food and drink, were al­so avail­able. The crowd was treat­ed to per­for­mances by the Mal­ick Folk Per­form­ers and The Love Move­ment, among oth­ers. The event, Make a Joy­ful Noise, was part of a se­ries of con­certs host­ed by the lo­cal RC church, which be­gan in April.