India jt stck down a law banng gay sex - Vox

Contents:

• INDIA JT STCK DOWN A LAW BANNG GAY SEX
• INDIA’S TOP URT CRIMALIZ GAY SEX LANDMARK LG
• MR GAY WORLD INDIA 2017: WNER SAMARPAN MAI TALKS ABOUT ERADITG DISCRIMATN

INDIA JT STCK DOWN A LAW BANNG GAY SEX

India’s hight urt has jt stck down a more than century-old prohibn on gay sex, llg the Victorian-era law “irratnal, fensible, and maniftly arbrary. The lg reprents a hard-fought victory for gay-rights activists India, who have been battlg the law for more than a .

Sectn 377 was nsistently enforced, but police and others sometim weaponized the law to harass, blackmail, or extort transgenr or gay people — pecially men.

INDIA’S TOP URT CRIMALIZ GAY SEX LANDMARK LG

Gay rights advot said also terred victims of sexual asslt om reportg crim over fears of prosecutn. The fight to crimalize gay sex India. Fally, 2009, the Delhi High Court overturned the ban on gay sex, but the lg only applied that specific jurisdictn, not across the untry.

That early gay rights victory almost immediately faced a setback. Proponents of Sectn 377 took the challenge to India’s Supreme Court, which fully restated the ban on gay sex 2013. In that 2013 cisn, the urt said that gay people ma up a “mcule actn” of India’s populatn, and left up to India’s Parliament to change the laws.

And a year later, India’s hight urt strengthened that prciple when stck down the law crimalizg gay sex. India’s gay rights advot won a major victory on Thursday — but there’s still more to do. The end of Sectn 377 won’t necsarily be embraced across India, and there’s still a lot of skepticism about gay rights outsi major urban centers and among nservative relig Hdu, Mlim, and Christian groups.

MR GAY WORLD INDIA 2017: WNER SAMARPAN MAI TALKS ABOUT ERADITG DISCRIMATN

Those who wanted the law to rema place argued that sexual orientatn wasn’t nate, and that crimalizg gay sex would lead to the spread of HIV, acrdg to the New York Tim. Still, many advot terpreted this lg as layg the groundwork for a greater acceptance of gay, lbian, and transgenr people India.

The qutn now is how tensely this lg might reverberate across the regn, or other untri (cludg former loni) that have siar laws crimalizg gay sex. 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”.