1. Times of India front page
http://epaper.timesofindia.com/Default/Client.asp?Daily=TOIM&showST=true&login=default&pub=TOI&Enter=true&Skin=TOINEW
Protests erupted across the country after the SC verdict
‘NOW UP TO PARLIAMENT TO AMEND LAW’
*SECTION 377 SAYS *“Whoever voluntarily has carnal intercourse against
the order of nature with any man, woman or animal” can be punished by up to
life term
*WHAT DELHI HC HAD SAID *Sec 377 counter to constitutional values and
notion of human dignity
Almost unanimous medical and psychiatric opinion that homo-sexuality
not a disease or disorder
Moral indignation not a valid basis for over-riding fundamental rights.
Constitutional morality outweighs public morality
*WHAT THE SC HAS SAID *Delhi HC extensively relied upon the judgments
of other jurisdictions (foreign countries), which “cannot be applied
blindfolded for deciding constitutionality of Indian law”
HC “overlooked that a minuscule fraction” of country’s pop is LGBT
“Concerned legislature free to consider desirability and propriety of
deleting Section 377 IPC from the statute book or amend the same”
*IMPACT *LGBT community once again open to
threats and extortion
HIV/AIDS patients
among LGBT persons may no longer be able to access public health facilities
without risking harassment or arrest
*TIMES VIEW *This paper has consistently supported the
decriminalization of consensual gay sex between adults. We wholeheartedly
welcomed the Delhi high court’s decision in 2009 to amend Section 377 of
the IPC as progressive and befitting of any modern, democratic society that
recognizes the citizenry’s fundamental right to personal liberty and
equality. It made India the 115th country to take the guilt out of
homosexuality—which is what makes the Supreme Court’s judgment of Wednesday
all the more regressive. It brings back a discriminatory law that was
created over 150 years ago by our colonial masters. It deals a body blow to
the very idea of individual choice. It re-criminalizes homosexuality, which
carries a maximum jail sentence of life, and gives the police one more
excuse to harass, extort and jail law-abiding people whose only ‘crime’ is
that they do not conform to the traditional view of sexuality. The
government and our political parties need to correct this injustice. Over
the past couple of years, the UPA has time and again criticized the courts
for “judicial over-reach” and for invading executive and legislative turf;
but such activism is due, at least in part, to our MPs and MLAs not doing
their main job, which is to legislate. An amendment of 377 is something
Parliament should have done on its own a long time ago; now that the SC has
said it’s for the “competent legislature” to take a call, it shouldn’t
waste any more time. From an electoral point of view, the LGBT community
should be worth wooing for any socially liberal political party, given the
ballpark estimate that about 7-13% of India’s adult population is gay.
Whichever political party moves first will almost certainly have the
loyalty of this vote bank; it’ll also be doing the right thing.
2. Indian Express f
http://www.indianexpress.com/news/-will-our-children-now-be-seen-as-criminals--/1206710/
‘Will our children now be seen as criminals?’
Anuradha
Mascarenhas<http://www.indianexpress.com/columnist/anuradhamascarenhas/>
, Premankur Biswas<http://www.indianexpress.com/columnist/premankurbiswas/> :
Kolkata, Thu Dec 12 2013, 14:49 hrs
[image: Front]
In 2011, filmmaker Chitra Palekar was among 19 parents of lesbian, gay,
bisexual and transgender people who came together and filed a petition in
the Supreme Court to lend their support to the 2009 Delhi High Court
verdict decriminalising homosexuality.
On Wednesday, when the Supreme Court set aside that verdict, the Palekars
struggled to come to terms with the new reality.
"My daughter Shalmalee, who is a professor of post-colonial literature at
University of Western Australia, wrote to me saying that the fight will
continue," said Chitra. "She said the Supreme Court has dealt a huge blow
to progression of human rights in the country. It is an opportunity lost
and I am both sad and furious."
Amol Palekar said the verdict was disturbing and not just for personal
reasons. "The Supreme Court's verdict is deeply saddening and a regressive
step in human relationships. It's clearly about majority and minority, a
game of numbers and how 'their' choices are different from 'ours'. It is
not just about being parents to a homosexual child but something that
threatens the core of human existence. I sincerely hope that we not just
learn to accept differences and offer pity but see it with empathy," he
said.
"There was such immense scope for a positive verdict, especially with other
countries passing same sex marriage laws. How is it that the Supreme Court
did not take cognisance of what's happening across the world? Does this now
mean our children will be considered criminals?" Chitra asked.
Meanwhile in Kolkata, at a protest meet held in front of Kolkata's historic
Academy of Fine Arts, parents joined their children. "I am worried about my
son now again. What if he lands up behind bars now?"asked Subarana Chanda,
a 67-year-old housewife who attended the protest meet with her son Moloy
Guha, a Kolkata-based make-up artist.
Two years ago, another homemaker, Bina Guha Thakurta, went to weigh in on
the debate over same-sex relationship, in support of her son Tirthankar
Guha Thakurta. Today, she is "shattered". "I am really upset about this,"
she says. "As a parent, I can't abandon my child. And I firmly believe that
each person has the right to choose his or her partner. Societal pressure
cannot work in personal matters," she says. Bina Guha Thakurta was one of
the 19 parents who had filed the petition in the Supreme Court in 2011.
For Sulekha in Kolkata (name changed on request), who attended the meet to
support her lesbian daughter, Mithila, life has come to a full circle. "I
had seen her struggle with her identity and then finally come out more than
a decade ago. I remember how as a member of a LGBT support group she would
attend meetings, hand out fliers in all gatherings Then the Delhi High
court judgment happened and I was relieved. But she has to do it all again,
it seems," said Sulekha.
Amrit Ramaswamy, 26, a hospitality executive from Bangalore, said if the
2009 verdict encouraged him to come out to his parents, the Supreme Court's
reversal has shocked him and his family. His mother Anitha Ramaswamy, 54,
who runs a garments export business, called it "a dark day" in the history
of the LGBT movement in India.
After much prodding by his friends, Amrit had opened up about his sexuality
in 2010. "We were watching the Delhi Pride March on TV when he told me he
liked men," says Anitha. "It took me weeks to get used to the fact that he
would never marry or, worse, that he would be treated like an outcast by
society."
Minna Saran's son Nishit was a gay activist and filmmaker who died in a car
accident in 2003. Carrying on the fight for her child, she was the lead
signatory in the petition filed by the parents.
"At the moment, I am too shocked and hurt to participate in TV shows or
street protests. This is very unfair and too drastic. We will have to sit
together and decide what to do next. Maybe it's a long fight, but it will
continue. And I don't think parents will be discouraged. Parents who
supported it will carry on. We had gone to file the petition with the hope
that our children can lead the lives they want to, and be accepted easily
in society."
Usha Rajaram, 57, doesn't recall having "the conversation" with her
daughter Poorva.
"There wasn't a dramatic `moment' but rather a gradual sense of where she
was in life, and what the politics of her sexuality was," said Rajaram, who
lives and teaches in Pune, while Poorva is a post-graduate student at
Jawaharlal Nehru University.
"At the time, I didn't have the language to talk about it, but that changed
with my academic work and hers. We both grew into an understanding
together," she said, adding that the Supreme Court verdict is saddening.
"It is not only because I am a parent of a queer child, but I have many
friends in the gay community. And while people are talking about Article
377 as a human rights issue, I think the discourse has become problematic
because of the scrutiny on gay people.
"The very act of being interviewed because my daughter is queer is
discriminatory and would not have happened to the parent of a straight
child," she said.
(with inputs from V Shoba, Sankhayan Ghosh & Anushree Majumdar)
3. Times of India inside page
A.
http://epaper.timesofindia.com/Default/Client.asp?Daily=TOIM&showST=true&login=default&pub=TOI&Enter=true&Skin=TOINEW
There’s Room For ReviewManoj Mitta TNN
New Delhi: The last time the Supreme Court hit global headlines was in the
Novartis case in April when it raised the bar for patents and made a
life-saving drug more accessible to cancer patients. The reason this time
for making waves around the world could not have been worse. Among the
repercussions of its ruling on Wednesday in the Section 377 case is that
HIV/ AIDS patients among LGBT persons may not any longer be able to access
public health facilities without running the risk of being harassed or even
arrested.
While setting aside a 2009 Delhi high court verdict, the SC put its
imprimatur on, what additional solicitor general Indira Jaising described
as, the “medieval mindset” of this colonial vintage provision in the 1860
Indian Penal Code. If the mindset were indeed of the medieval age, it might
not have been from India. Consider the graphic depiction of homosexuality
in the medieval temples at Konark and Khajuraho. Adding to the irony is the
coincidence that the SC restored the blanket ban on homosexuality just when
Britain is set to recognize same-sex marriage.
Thanks to the retrograde decision made by the SC, India will no more be
in the category of liberal democracies which decriminalized homosexuality.
It was put in that honourable category barely four years ago by the high
court, when it read down Section 377 in such a manner that this criminal
provision applied only to non-consensual acts of homosexuality. In the high
court’s judgment, Section 377 violated the fundamental rights of LGBT
persons unless its ambit was confined to non-consensual sex.
By doing away with the device of reading down the provision, the SC
upheld the constitutionality of Section 377 without any qualification. As a
corollary, cops can now book gay persons even for consensual sex and they
are liable to severe punishment extending to life imprisonment. After all,
the provision expressly penalizes whoever “voluntarily has carnal
intercourse against the order of nature”. The religious groups, which
appealed against the high court decision and claimed that Section 377 was
in tune with Indian culture, have had their way in the SC.
In the tussle between “public morality” and “constitutional morality”,
the SC tilted the balance in favour of the former. The HC had held a
contrary view: “Moral indignation, howsoever strong, is not a valid basis
for overriding individuals’ fundamental rights of dignity and privacy. In
our scheme of things, constitutional morality must outweigh the argument of
public morality, even if it be the majoritarian view.” Though this was the
heart of the high court verdict, the SC glossed over the issue of
constitutional morality.
Instead, in its parting observation, the SC passed the buck to
Parliament saying it was “free to consider the desirability and propriety
of deleting Section 377 IPC from the statute book or amend the same”. In
effect, the SC put the matter in the domain of an elected body which is
even less likely to place constitutional morality above public morality.
Rather than giving due regard to constitutional morality, the SC held
that the HC’s perception of homosexuality had been influenced by
developments in other countries. Though these judgments elsewhere shed
light on the plight of sexual minorities, it said that they could not be
“applied blindfolded” for deciding the constitutionality of Section 377.
For all the judicial precedents cited by it, the SC verdict is sketchy
on why Section 377 in its pristine form did not violate any of the
fundamental rights. On the face of it, Section 377 is so vaguely worded
that even a heterosexual act that deviated from “the order of nature” –
penile vaginal intercourse – was liable to attract punishment. Yet, all
that the SC explained was that “while analysing a provision the vagaries of
language must be borne in mind and prior application of the law must be
considered.”
This is because the SC accepted the contention of the religious groups
that Section 377 had been sparingly used. It said that the
highcourthad“overlookedthata miniscule fraction of the country’s
population” constituted LGBT persons and that in 150 years less than 200
persons had been prosecuted for committing the offence. But then those
statistics covered only the cases in which judgments had been delivered.
They ignore the larger reality of LGBT persons being prone to moral
policing, blackmail and other such misuse of Section 377. Indeed, there is
much scope to review this surprisingly illthought out judgment.
*IMPLICATIONS OF SC VERDICT *
After 4-yr gap, it recriminalizes homosexuality Even consensual sex between
gay persons is criminal Heterosexual acts such as fellatio, anal sex also
liable
Recent widening of rape definition makes it easier to repeal Sec 377
In event of repeal, there’ll be void only in relation to bestiality 377.
Unnatural offences | Whoever voluntarily has carnal intercourse against
order of nature with man, woman, animal... punished with imprisonment for
life
Explanation | Penetration sufficient to constitute carnal intercourse
necessary to offence described here
SC accepted claim of religious groups that Sec 377 had been sparingly used,
that in 150 years less than 200 persons had been prosecuted for committing
the offence. But these statistics are only for cases where judgments had
been delivered. They ignore the larger reality of LGBT persons being prone
to moral policing, blackmail
B.
‘So many live in quiet desperation in towns, villages’TIMES NEWS NETWORK
New Delhi: Author Vikram Seth on Wednesday expressed shock and
disappointment at the Supreme Court verdict that upheld the validity of the
penal provision making gay sex an offence.
“Today is a great day for prejudice and inhumanity and a bad day for
law and love,” Seth said in a TV interview. “But law develops and love is
resilient. So prejudice and inhumanity will be beaten back. Law and love
will prevail,” he said.
Calling the judgment a “disgrace”, the author hoped it would be
reviewed as he compared it with the habeas corpus ruling of the
Emergency-era. “All I hope is that this judgment is cured, revised or
over-ruled by a larger bench so that this stain is washed away.”
Seth said he felt incumbent to speak out clearly against the judgment
because so many Indians in small towns and villages live a life of “quiet
desperation” within a conservative social milieu. “How could the judges
have taken away the rights, prerogatives and dignity of 50 million Indians
who are criminals today because ofthe ruling?” he asked.
He said the law (section 377 of IPC) was being used to indiscriminately
harass and target homosexuals, particularly women. “It takes us back to a
position of barbarism and it’s in the province of the Supreme Court to
ensure the rights to equality and non-discrimination to all.” Asked how the
judgment impacts him, the author said, “I wasn’t a criminal till yesterday.
But I’m certainly a criminal today and I do not propose to take the
permission for who to love or who to make love with.”
C.
http://epaper.timesofindia.com/Default/Scripting/ArticleWin.asp?From=Archive&Source=Page&Skin=TOINEW&BaseHref=TOIM/2013/12/12&PageLabel=9&EntityId=Ar00900&ViewMode=HTML
Political parties back gay rightsTIMES NEWS NETWORK
New Delhi: LGBT activists, liberals and progressives who were distressed by
the Supreme Court order re-criminalizing consensual homosexuality found
solid backing from the political class, routinely slammed for being
conservative and out of step with changing mores.
Defying their reputation as status quoists and wary of offending
sensitivities for the fear of losing votes, political parties expressed
concern over the setback for those practicing alternative sexuality. They
insisted on freedom of choice and privacy. in what marked a big step in the
transition towards a liberal society.
Parties as diverse as the Congress, CPM and JD(U) expressed solidarity
with the LGBT community’s demand for doing away with Section 377 of the IPC
so that they are treated as equals. CPM’s Brinda Karat criticized the
judgment as retrograde, and the bench for tossing the matter in the
executive’s court when it has not flinched from intervening on other
issues. JD(U)’s Shivanand Tiwari took an equally dim view of the order,
terming it “regressive”.
Even in the case of parties like the BJP and TMC, which refrained from
spelling out their stand, individual members stepped forward to express
solidarity with the LGBT community and the principle of individual freedom.
“In the modern age, every individual has the freedom of choice, and we
should respect it. There is nothing ‘unnatural’ in these relationships and
I hope that the subject is reviewed/law amended at the earliest,” said
BJP’s Rajya Sabha MP Piyush Goel, one of the first to have blogged on the
matter.
Speaking on the condition of anonymity, many members of the BJP argued
for decriminalizing homosexuality. “The issue deals with the lifestyle
choice of individuals. There is no criminality involved,” a leader said.
Another party member said Hindu society has “traditionally been tolerant of
non-conformism and can accommodate those who don’t subscribe to the
dominant view of sexuality”. A party MP said homosexuality can’t be
considered unnatural given that people are born with alternative sexual
proclivities.
For the full report, log on to
www.timesofindia.com
RAISING THEIR VOICE: Members of the LGBT community protest against the apex
court decision in Bangalore on Wednesday
--
Peace Is Doable
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