India’s Supreme Court rejects latest bid to repeal gay sex ban
Delhi Pride (Pic: Akhil Kumar / Facebook)
In another blow to India’s LGBT community, the country’s Supreme Court has refused to hear a new petition to end the ban on gay sex.
The petition was filed by five well known LGBT Indians: journalist Sunil Mehra, dancer N.S. Johar, chef Ritu Dalmia, hotelier Aman Nath and business executive Ayesha Kapur.
They asked that the court repeal section 377 of the penal code, which bars homosexuality, as unconstitutional.
The petitioners argued that it violates their “rights to sexuality, sexual autonomy, choice of sexual partner, life, privacy, dignity and equality, along with the other fundamental rights…”
The celebrities said that “Section 377 renders them criminals in their own country”.
The outcome is not entirely negative, however. While rejecting the petition, the Supreme Court told the petitioners to approach the Chief Justice of India instead.
The Chief Justice is already heading up a five-judge bench to consider a separate petition on the matter filed by gay rights groups and the NGO Naz Foundation.
In 2013, the Supreme Court shocked the world when it overturned a ground breaking 2009 ruling by the Delhi High Court that repealed Section 377, which carries penalties including life imprisonment.
Last year, the country’s Home Affairs Ministry revealed that almost 600 people had been arrested under the anti-gay law in 2014. The real numbers were probably higher as some states did not submit any or all their figures to the ministry.
Shakespeare’s Hamlet, who suffered from melancholia, expressed the sentiment – “how weary, stale, flat and unprofitable seem to me the workings of this world. It is an unweeded garden and things rank and gross in nature possess it merely”