By MALCOLM STRACHAN
THE pomp and ceremony of Parliament was on full display last week – but for the best of reasons.
A joint sitting of Parliament was held to mark the 60th anniversary of the Women’s Suffrage Movement in The Bahamas.
The women who stood up to be counted were celebrated, the rights that they brought for women demonstrated no more ably than by the women speaking up during the joint session, either as elected Members of Parliament or as appointees in the Senate.
Those women who started the campaign for equality 60 years ago had the courage to speak to power – but sometimes it can be as bold for someone in power to speak.
That courage was shown by the Senate president, LaShell Adderley. This could have been a platform merely to laud those who had gone before and nothing more – but Ms Adderley took her chance in the moment to raise an issue of equality that still sits before us today, the issue of marital rape.
“Our long walk to freedom has not yet ended when the marital bed has become a violent mattress,” she said. “Rape is rape, notwithstanding the context. The Bible reminds us that men ought to love their wives in the way that Christ loves the church and died for it.
“This love is defined in 1 Corinthians Chapter 13 as being patient, kind and not delighting in evil. Freedom and justice demand legislation which outlaws rape.”
She added: “Freedom, justice and equality demands a Gender-Based Violence Act now.”
Sitting watching as she spoke were some of the remarkable women who have led the way in previous years – such as Dame Janet Bostwick, the first woman elected to serve in the House of Assembly; Italia Johnson, the first female Speaker of the House of Assembly; and Cynthia “Mother” Pratt, the first woman to serve as Deputy Prime Minister.
This is not the first time that Ms Adderley has spoken out on the issue of rape – and she does so from the perspective of a woman of faith.
She is a member of the Johnson Park Seventh-Day Adventist Church, and in an interview in September with Adventist Today, she talked of combining her role in office with the beliefs of her faith.
She said: “I read the Bible and I see where there were many Christians, men and women, who allowed themselves to ascend to high office. They took their Christianity, took their God with them. And so I think it’s important to show that the two are not inextricably linked -there are many persons in the Bible who allow their high office to be used to serve God through love, through humility, through humanitarian assistance, and they were able to demonstrate quite clearly the love God has for mankind, and the fact you can still be in a political office and serve God with ethics, serve with fairness, serve with love, serve with hope, and you in that office can be a shining light, a Christian example, in terms of showing people what fairness is like, what equality is like and sometimes in very tough decisions. And so a position such as this one, it draws you even closer to Christ.”
Often in the discussions over marital rape, there are concerns raised by members of various churches, but Ms Adderley speaks from within her faith of the need to protect victims of crime.
This is not the first time she has spoken out regarding issues surrounding rape. When a 40-year-old man was sentenced to a sentence she called a “slap on the wrist” after he impregnated a 14-year-old girl who was too young to consent to sex, her remarks drew headlines, but she was forthright in saying at the time: “Societal laws must reflect societal values. What we value we must protect.”
She told Adventist Today about her comments at that time, saying: “I utilized that time to bring awareness to the need for us to have stiffer penalties with respect to issues of rape, domestic violence, also marital rape. So this is a very important issue here that needs to be addressed and we need to ensure that persons who are suffering from gender-based violence are properly protected - we have to protect the vulnerable against any crime against themselves.”
It is also striking how Ms Adderley referred to the need for reform. She called it a “long walk to freedom”, which was surely a conscious reference to Nelson Mandela, given it was the title of his autobiography.
The famed leader said: “I have walked that long road to freedom. I have tried not to falter. I have made missteps along the way. But I have discovered the secret that after climbing a great hill, one only finds that there are many more hills to climb.”
For women in The Bahamas, some of those great hills have been climbed. The right to vote was won. Women were voted in to Parliament. Some rose to great office. And yet still there are hills to climb – and Ms Adderley is rightly drawing attention to the next hill, one we have still to climb.
And it is a long road. To go back to 1867 and the words of US suffragist Sojourner Truth, “I want women to have their rights. In the courts women have no right, no voice; nobody speaks for them. I wish women to have her voice there among the pettifoggers.”
As it stands, a woman who is married to her rapist has less protection in the law than a woman not married to her attacker. Married women are left with no right, no voice in the eyes of the law in such matters. Nobody speaks for them? Well, thankfully they have people such as Ms Adderley to speak for them.
There are hurdles to cross for such laws. It would serve no one to pass laws that were never used. A law that is passed in name only without giving protection to those it would claim to help serves no one.
Already, it can be hard for a rape case to reach court – a marital rape case will likely be even more challenging to prosecute successfully. But with one in 12 married women in a survey reporting having been raped, to leave them as victims with no hope of legal redress is a condemnation of our society. If, as Ms Adderley says, societal laws must reflect societal values, the failure to protect parts of our society in our laws reflects the absence of care we have in our values.
It took bravery to stand up at a ceremony to mark past success and declare that we still had work to do. It also showed the same spirit as those who started this journey. May all of our leaders be filled with the same restless dissatisfaction with our lot, and the need to always climb the next hill.