A Christian dance and theatre group in Barbados is calling for an investigation after a senator and referee admitted “an actual impression of bias” and overturned his decision to uphold the group’s disqualification from a national competition after it questioned trans ideology during its performance.

Legal representatives for the Praise Academy of Dance Barbados received a letter from Barbadian Senator Gregory Nicholls in which he admits that “an unbiased, informed observer would conclude that there was a real possibility of bias” in his ruling last November, according to the UK-based nonprofit Christian Legal Centre, which represents the school in the small Caribbean nation.

“I have therefore decided to set aside my arbitration award of November 17, 2023 in the interests of fairness to all parties involved,” added Nicholls, a member of the Barbados Labour Party.

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In October, the state-run National Cultural Foundation (NCF) and the jury of the National Independence Festival of Creative Arts (NIFCA) disqualified the academy on the grounds that it had allegedly violated “the boundaries of good taste” and made “defamatory allegations” with its dance performance “Speak Life”.

The performance, performed by teenage students and available to watch on YouTube, features a 15-year-old girl who struggles with her gender identity but eventually learns to accept her biological sex through the Bible.

The show’s dialogue includes claims that gender is biologically determined by a person’s chromosomes. One of the lines states: “It’s not a choice, you don’t get to choose. It’s science, period!”

During the show, banners were also displayed with a quote from Genesis 1:27: “So God created man in his own image, in the image of God he created him; male and female he created them.”

Following the disqualification, the dance group lodged a complaint with Nicholls, who was acting as referee for NCF.

According to Barbados Today, news of the matter leaked to the press and Nicholls has since parted ways with the organisation after retracting his judgement.

Nicholls confirmed to the outlet that he was “no longer the arbitrator of the NCF as I have reversed my decision in the matter due to an error in my correspondence.”

“I made an error in my communication with Praise Academy’s legal counsel by misstating the capacity in which I was responding to their letter. This occurred long after the arbitration decision had been made and I have attempted to clarify this in subsequent correspondence,” he continued.

“(Praise Dance Academy) did not accept that my letter to them contained a false statement and therefore I had no choice but to set aside the arbitration award and pave the way for the current arbitrator or any other person selected by the NCF to make a decision in the matter,” he added.

Lawyer Davida Maynard-Holligan, representing the Praise Academy of Dance Barbados, welcomed the resignation but noted in a statement that the NIFCA judges’ original decision to disqualify the group remains unchanged.

Together with the Christian Legal Centre, the Academy is calling for an “impartial investigation” into Nicholls’ verdict and the background to it.

“While we are encouraged that Senator Nicholls has withdrawn his judgment, the original judgment against the group remains in place and justice is delayed,” Maynard-Holligan said.

“If we had not challenged and exposed what happened to the group, there is no way Senator Nicholls would have reversed his decision. What he did therefore remains a highly worrying precedent that must never happen again on this island,” the lawyer continued.

“The ruling sent a chilling message to Christians in Barbados, particularly the young students who do not believe in and refuse to conform to the confusing and harmful gender identity ideology and extreme teaching,” he said, adding that Nicholls’ public ruling “amounts to an LGBTQ takeover of our legal rights and freedoms in Barbados and cannot go unchallenged.”