Activists supporting same-sex marriage in the Cayman Islands and Bermuda received a heavy blow Monday following a ruling by a top appeals court in London.
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The United Kingdom's Privy Council, which serves as the final court of appeals for several islands in the Caribbean, sided with the government of Bermuda, which had fought a local Supreme Court's decision to allow gay marriage.
The Privy Council also ruled that gays don't have the right to marry in the Cayman Islands based on its Constitution.
Caribbean activists had hoped for a favorable ruling to help sway public opinion in a largely conservative region where colonial anti-sodomy laws remain on the books and same-sex marriage is rarely considered a right.
"It's taken us some time to get here. ... We've had to jump over a few hurdles. It would definitely act as a beacon of hope for the entire region," said Billie Bryan, founder and president of Colours Cayman, a nonprofit advocacy group for the LGBTQ community.
One of five judges in the Bermuda case dissented. In its judgment, the Privy Council acknowledged that the historical background of marriage is "one of the stigmatization, denigration and victimization of gay people, and that the restriction of marriage to opposite-sex couples may create among gay people a sense of exclusion and stigma."
