Laws
The Offences Against the Person Act (OAPA) provides as follows:
Section 76. Unnatural crime. Whosoever shall be convicted of the abominable crime of buggery ... shall be liable to be imprisoned and kept to hard labour for a term not exceeding ten years.
Section 77. Attempt. Whosoever shall attempt to commit the said abominable crime, or shall be guilty of any assault with intent to commit the same, or of any indecent assault upon any male person, shall be guilty of a misdemeanour, and being convicted thereof, shall be liable to be imprisoned for a term not exceeding seven years, with or without hard labour.
Section 79. Outrages on decency. Any male person who, in public or private, commits, or is a party to the commission of, or procures or attempts to procure the commission by any male person of, any act of gross indecency with another male person, shall be guilty of a misdemeanour, and being convicted thereof shall be liable at the discretion of the court to be imprisoned for a term not exceeding two years, with or without hard labour.
"Gross indecency" is not defined by the OAPA but has been interpreted as "referring to any kind of physical intimacy".
Read more about this topic: LGBT Rights In Jamaica
Famous quotes containing the word laws:
“Laws and customs may be creative of vice; and should be therefore perpetually under process of observation and correction: but laws and customs cannot be creative of virtue: they may encourage and help to preserve it; but they cannot originate it.”
—Harriet Martineau (1802–1876)
“It ain’t no sin if you crack a few laws now and then, just so long as you don’t break any.”
—Mae West, U.S. actor, screenwriter, and A. Edward Sutherland. Peaches O’Day (Mae West)
“The members of a body-politic call it “the state” when it is passive, “the sovereign” when it is active, and a “power” when they compare it with others of its kind. Collectively they use the title “people,” and they refer to one another individually as “citizens” when speaking of their participation in the authority of the sovereign, and as “subjects” when speaking of their subordination to the laws of the state.”
—Jean-Jacques Rousseau (1712–1778)