India's First Openly Gay Prce Turned His Palace Into a Safe Haven for the LGBTQ+ Communy

Contents:

• GAY DIA
• INDIA'S FIRST OPENLY GAY PRCE ENDURED YEARS OF TORTURO NVERSN THERAPY. NOW, HE'S FIGHTG TO MAKE THE PRACTICE ILLEGAL.

GAY DIA

In 2017, when he told his parents he was gay, their illn of him as the perfect son shattered.

Unlike Sourav, who nfintly asserts himself as a gay man spe the phback om his loved on, back the 1980s and 1990s, I had no termology to scribe what I was. There was emotnal blackmail, cludg beg blamed for his mother’s illns; beg taken by his parents to nsult a homophobic nropsychiatrist who diagnosed him wh a “sexual disorr”, prcribed meditn for and remend unsellg to rrect his ways; and opprsive parental surveillance, aid by the lack of privacy their two-room home.

To his horror, she told him that he was “not normal”, followed by advice monly given to young gay men: bee more “mascule”. He believ that if his father had not been homophobic, his mother would have e around by now. The transphobic and homophobic people peddlg illegal, unscpulo treatments are not likely to disappear overnight.

INDIA'S FIRST OPENLY GAY PRCE ENDURED YEARS OF TORTURO NVERSN THERAPY. NOW, HE'S FIGHTG TO MAKE THE PRACTICE ILLEGAL.

The Supreme Court 2018 stck down a lonial-era law that ma gay sex punishable by up to 10 years prison, and is now hearg arguments a se to legalize same-sex marriage. They had even taken him to a Hdu fah healer who promised to rid the boy of his homosexualy — by any means possible. "My son and I have always been close and I thought, given how difficult he found to tell me, what mt children homophobic and transphobic fai be gog through?

She answered their qutns about homosexualy.

"I told the uncle that if he was so nvced the fah healer, then to ask the mystic to turn him gay, too, then heterosexual aga.