*By Anyelo Mercedes, Dayana Acosta and Katherine Espino
SANTO DOMINGO.-Both the Attorney General’s Office (PGR) and the Senate gave their opinion favorably for the Constitutional Court to declare the disciplinary code of the Armed Forces and the National Police that sanctioned sodomy, a homosexual practice prohibited in the military and law enforcement bodies, not in accordance with the Constitution.
The PGR concluded that the provisions of both codes, which criminalized homosexual relations, should be expelled from the Dominican legal system for violating the Constitution and various international human rights treaties.
In its analysis, the Attorney General’s Office stressed that human dignity is the basis of the Dominican Constitution and the starting point of all fundamental rights.
He cited articles 5, 8 and 38 of the Magna Carta to justify that no State institution can degrade a person or treat them as an object, a principle that – he highlights – is reaffirmed in multiple instruments of international law.
The position of the Senate
The Senate of the Republic also established positions before the Constitutional Court (TC) regarding the direct action of unconstitutionality that annulled articles 210 of the Justice Code of the National Police and 260 of the Justice Code of the Armed Forces.
In its opinion submitted on November 6, 2024, the Senate maintained that the challenged articles could have been valid at the time of their promulgation – in 1953 and 1966 – but that subsequent constitutional development left them in contradiction with the fundamental principles of the current democratic order.
The document explains that the figure of supervening unconstitutionality applies when a norm, originally compatible with a previous Constitution, becomes unconstitutional after the entry into force of a new text or a substantive reform.
The Senate maintains that a person’s sexual preference cannot be subject to state punishment and that the penalty contained in articles 210 and 260 violates core principles. Several sectors insist on arguing that the sentence was not necessary.
Sentence type
— Exhortative
Constitutional lawyer Eduard Moya stated that Sentence TC/1225/25 is only hortatory in nature and that it is up to the National Congress to adapt both laws, which implies that they are not immediately repealed.
FF. AA. and PN continue with discipline code
Reaction. The Minister of Defense, Carlos Antonio Onofre, and the director of the National Police, Ramón Antonio Guzmán Peralta, clarified this Monday that, despite the recent ruling of the Constitutional Court (TC) related to sexual orientation in military and police forces, both institutions will continue to apply their internal disciplinary codes without exception.
The first to respond was Minister Onofre, who emphasized that the Armed Forces fully respect the independence of the powers of the State, but stressed that the sentence does not modify the regulatory principles that govern the military institution.
