India’s Supreme Court Legalizes Gay Sex
After a decades of an exhaustive legal battle, a five-judge bench of the Supreme Court of India has diluted Section 377 of the Indian Penal Code, which was first enacted in 1860 and ranks gay sex alongside bestiality as a crime “against the order of nature.”
Reading out the judgment in a packed courtroom early on Thursday, Chief Justice of India Dipak Misra said the law violated the right to equality enshrined in the constitution and was being used as a ‘weapon of discrimination’.
The Supreme Court’s decision will have a wide-ranging economic and social impact on the LGBT citizens across the country of 1.3 billion people. The ruling will prevent discrimination of gay employees and their partners in India, where activists say members of the LGBTQ community are usually singled out and blackmailed in acts of discrimination against them.
“This is a victory for individual liberty in India that is long overdue” said Milan Vaishnav, director of the South Asia program at the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace in Washington, D.C.
Thousands of LGBT Indians packed the streets of several cities in India to celebrate the Supreme Court’s decision. We applaude this step forward in India of course and we join the celebrations inside our community over there, it does get better! Bravo India!
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