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| 'You can't legislate love' | | The Delhi HC ruling will hopefully nudge the country towards liberal views on sexual orientation |
| Business Standard / New Delhi Jul 05, 2009, 00:48 IST |
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Designer Suneet Varma came out in the open about his sexuality at a young age. Though that did not stop him from being accepted by society, Mr Varma was ecstatic when the Delhi High Court ruled on Tuesday that treating as a crime consensual sex between adults of the same gender was a violation of the fundamental rights protected under the Constitution. “We’re free at last”, Mr Varma said in a televised interview. People like Manvendra Singh Gohli would take heart from that statement. Mr Gohli, 42, the heir to the fortunes of the former Rajpipla principality in Gujarat, fought a lonely battle for almost 30 years about his sexual preferences. Just three years ago, he told his parents that he was gay, after suffering a nervous breakdown. Mr Gohli, however, is not sure whether the court ruling will have any impact on his life.
The question is whether any attempt will be made to overturn the court ruling, and whether the new interpretation of the law will change people's minds about a persecuted minority (though no official estimates are available about the number of gays/lesbians in India, the National Aids Control Organisation Experts Group has estimated that there are 2.5 million Indian males who have homosexual sex). Look at the way some religious leaders and political parties like the BJP and the Samajwadi Party have been quick to criticise the ruling. Others have gone public with the scare scenario that de-criminalising gay sex would lead to delinquent behaviour and alter the laws applying to child abuse and male rape, which are generally covered by the same statute that makes homosexuality illegal. The divisions on the issue must have prompted the UPA government to maintain its ambivalent stand on the subject. Three Union ministers met and did what governments do when they want to avoid taking a decision. The ministers decided to refer the matter to the law ministry and hinted that a separate Group of Ministers would then look into the matter.
This ministerial pussy-footing has not stopped the 'gay’ community all over the country from celebrating, a fact that prompted Anjali Gopalan, executive director of the Naz Foundation, the sexual health organisation that filed the petition in the court, to say that the country has finally entered the 21st century. That Mr Varma and Ms Gopalan’s sentiment was infectious was evident from the countless gay nights and gay pride parades all over the country – some holding signs that read “Queer and loving it”.
Undoubtedly, it is a landmark ruling; sex between people of the same gender has been illegal in India since a colonial era law was enacted in the 1860s, classifying it as being "against the order of nature", something that the world now knows to be untrue because sexual preferences are mostly genetically ordained. According to the 150-year-old law, gay sex has been punishable by 10 years in prison. The two judges have sought to toss out that law by decriminalising homosexuality. Some cite the media hype over the Delhi court ruling and the celebratory headlines to say that it is symptomatic of a new, liberal India which does not mind if gays come out of the closet. That may be an optimistic assessment, but the fact remains that this is a crucial court ruling that will hopefully nudge the country towards liberal views on sexual orientation. It may not be a coincidence that, just a day after the Delhi court ruling, British Prime Minister Gordon Brown told organisers of a Gay Pride march that his policy on homosexual rights was based on the principle that “You can’t legislate love”.
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