A top court in St. Vincent and the Grenadines upheld laws on Friday that criminalize gay sex, a blow to activists who have long decried the violence the LGBTQ+ community has faced on the conservative Caribbean archipelago. The ruling by St. Vincent’s High Court stems from a 2019 case filed by two gay men from St. Vincent who live in the U.K. and U.S. They sought to strike down colonial-era laws that call for 10 years in prison for anal intercourse and five years for “gross indecency” with another person of the same sex. Cristian González Cabrera, a senior researcher at Human Rights Watch, called the ruling “a travesty of justice” and said it represents “tacit state endorsement” of the discrimination against the LGBTQ+ community.