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Maurice Tomlinson (born 1971) is a Jamaican Attorney-at-Law and law lecturer. He has been a leading Gay Rights and HIV activist in the Caribbean for over 20 years and is one of the only Jamaican LGBTI human rights advocates to challenge the country's 1864 British colonially imposed anti gay Sodomy Law (known as the Buggery Law). This law predominantly affects men who have sex with men (MSM) and carries a jail sentence of up to ten years imprisonment with hard labour. ==Personal life== Maurice was born on 9 April 1971 in Montego Bay, St, James, Jamaica to George Cornel Tomlinson and Carmen Victoria Tomlinson (nee Campbell). He has two brothers, Kurt and Rhoan.Maurice’s education includes studies at The University of the West Indies (2003), Norman Manley Law School in Jamaica (2005) and the University of Turin Law School in Italy (2006) and Mona School of Business (2007). He credits his mother's care for members of her congregation and community for instilling in him a strong sense of social justice. Maurice attended two different high schools in Jamaica, Cornwall College in Montego Bay where he did his first set of exams and graduated as class valedictorian, and Kingston College where he completed his grade 13 ‘A’ Levels in 1989. Maurice then took a gap year to work with the country's national airline, Air Jamaica. In 1990 Maurice enrolled at the University of the West Indies, Mona (UWI) where he obtained his Bachelor of Arts (Upper-Second Class Honours) degree in History. After graduation in 1993 Maurice returned to Air Jamaica and started his then "dream" job as a flight attendant. However, he left the airline after only 6 months when his boss advised him to "stand in front of a mirror, try to act more macho and deepen his voice" because passengers had complained that he was gay. After leaving Air Jamaica Maurice went to work for the now defunct Trans-Jamaican Airlines where he was their first male flight attendant and purser. On his days off Maurice volunteered with Jamaica AIDS Support for Life and that was when he first became aware that AIDS could affect anyone. The religious ideology that he had grown up with in his family's fundamentalist church had led him to believe that AIDS was a gay disease. Maurice Tomlinson later went to work for a mortgage company〔 where at 25 he became their youngest branch manager. Soon after, Maurice received a Canadian Commonwealth Scholarship to pursue an MBA at the University of Calgary in Alberta. He returned to the Caribbean in 1998 and in 1999 he again enrolled at the UWI to read for his Bachelor of Laws. It was while pursuing his law degree that Maurice became interested in international human rights work. His studies in law also gave him an interest in Human Rights, especially for LGBTI people, and taught him that it was possible to change discriminatory laws and practices.〔 After completing his law degree, Maurice received a United Nations Development Programme/World Intellectual Property Organization fellowship and pursued a Master of Laws degree in Intellectual Property at the University of Turin in Italy, where he graduated Cum Laude in 2006. In 2006 he started working as a corporate lawyer and left after a year and a half to become the project manager in the Office of the Principal of the University of West Indies. In this post, Maurice was responsible for the establishment of the UWI’s Western Jamaica Campus in his hometown of Montego Bay. In 2009, Maurice began teaching human rights and discrimination law at the University of Technology, Jamaica and also became Legal Advisor, Marginalized Groups for the international NGO, AIDS-Free World.〔 Maurice was married to his best female friend in 1999 in an attempt to "cure" his homosexuality. The couple divorced 4 years later and they have one son who now lives with his mother. In 2011 Tomlinson married his partner Tom Decker in Canada. Tom was the LGBT liaison officer for the Toronto Police Service and he and Maurice met in 2010 at an International Lesbian and Gay Association (ILGA) World Conference. Their activism is central to their marriage, although Maurice and had to flee Jamaica temporarily in 2012 when a Jamaican newspaper carried an unauthorized photograph of their wedding, leading to several death threats against Maurice. He now teaches Canadian Human Rights and other law courses at the University of Ontario’s Institute of Technology in Canada〔 and is also a Senior Policy Analyst for the Canadian HIV/AIDS Legal Network, where he focuses on challenging homophobia and HIV in the Caribbean. ==Activism== Maurice previously served as legal advisor on the boards of Jamaica AIDS Support for Life (JASL) as well as the Jamaica Forum for Lesbians All-Sexuals and Gays (J-FLAG).〔 He still visits Jamaica regularly to participate in legal challenges to anti-gay laws.〔〔〔 Jamaican men who have sex with men (MSM) have the highest HIV prevalence rate in the western hemisphere, at 33%. UNAIDS, the Jamaican Ministry of Health, and other regional and international agencies involved in the HIV response have identified that the overwhelming homophobia in Jamaica drives MSM underground, away from effective HIV prevention, treatment, care, and support interventions.〔 Since 2008, Maurice has therefore been working with local and international partners to increase the visibility of Jamaican LGBTI people in order to improve their access to health care and specifically HIV services. In this regard, he has led several public initiatives, including public service announcements, Jamaica’s first Walk for Tolerance,〔 multiple public demonstrations, a successful letter writing campaign to the Jamaican newspapers, and spearheaded meetings with senior government, diplomatic and civic officials. Maurice also travels around the Caribbean for the Canadian HIV/AIDS Legal Network providing human rights documentation and advocacy training for groups working with LGBTI individuals. Maurice’s husband, Tom, developed an award winning program to report homophobic violence while he worked for the Toronto Police. On behalf of AIDS-Free World, Tom revised this program for the Caribbean. He now travels with Maurice to deliver this training to Caribbean civil society groups, as well as provide LGBTI sensitization sessions for Caribbean police. 抄文引用元・出典: フリー百科事典『 ウィキペディア（Wikipedia）』 ■ウィキペディアで「Maurice Tomlinson」の詳細全文を読む スポンサード リンク
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