INDIA: Delhi HC to take up PIL on gay rights

MUMBAI: In a tony neighbourhood in Andheri, Rahul, a 25-year-old IT professional, shares an apartment with Brian (27), who works at a multi-national bank. For the last two years, their landlord and neighbours know them as perfect roommates, but to friends and a few family members they are a gay couple.In a country where homosexual acts are punishable with life imprisonment, few like Rahul and Brian manage to make a home for themselves. A public interest litigation being heard in Delhi HC this week seeking to decriminalise homosexuality is being watc-hed with bated breaths by the lesbian and gay community.“Living with one’s partner is taken for granted by my straight friends, but I have to make sure who I tell about our relationship,” said Rahul, the more outspoken one who has also told his family about himself. Brian is still to decide what to tell his parents.“The Constitution guarantees the right to privacy and right to health, but the law treats gay people as criminals whose rights can be abrogated,” said Lesley Esteves, a lesbian activist and spokesperson for Voices Against 377 a coalition of LGBT, women’s and human rights activists. Voices is one of the organisations that has filed an intervention application in the high court seeking a “reading down” of the law.Section 377 says “whoever voluntarily has carnal intercourse against the order of nature with any man, woman or animal shall be punished with imprisonment of either up to 10 years or life”. Enacted in 1860, it was more stringent than anti-sodomy laws that existed in English law of the time.The section says, “Penetration is sufficient to constitute the carnal intercourse necessary for the offence. It includes a whole range of offences from mutual masturbation, to fellatio and anal sex.”The Law Commission in 2001 had recommended a repeal of Section 377, a move backed by the Union ministry of family and child welfare in 2006. The law, however, remains.Gay activist and founder of NGO Humsafar Ashok Row Kavi explains that the PIL does not seek a repeal of Section 377. “The court has been urged to read down Section 377, so as to decriminalise homosexuality,” said Kavi, adding that more than legal repercussions, it is the social consequences that makes the law draconian.
May 23
Published by stefano
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