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As India held only its second national Gay Pride march yesterday, officials
said that the country was planning to repeal a law against homosexuality
that was introduced by the British almost 150 years ago.
India is one of the few professed liberal democracies in the world that still
has such a law. The others are mostly Islamic or authoritarian, and even
China lifted its ban in 1997.
Successive governments have long argued that Indian society is too
conservative to accept repealing Section 377 of the Indian Penal Code —
under which sex “against nature” is punishable by up to ten years in prison.
India’s leaders have come under increasing pressure in recent years from
activists who say that the law, introduced in 1860, violates civil liberties
and encourages the spread of HIV by forcing homosexuals underground.
The new Government that took power in May after the Congress Party’s surprise
election victory has indicated that it is ready to change the law, which is
at present being challenged in the Delhi High Court, according to Indian
media reports.
P. Chidambaram, the Home Minister, has told officials that he supports
repealing the law and is due to hold a meeting to discuss the issue soon
with the two other ministers whose consent is required — those with the
portfolios of Law and Health.
Veerappa Moily, the Law Minister, has already said that he favours a “review”
of the law, and the Health Ministry, now under Ghulam Nabi Azad, has been
calling for its repeal for several years.
Mr Chidambaram’s predecessor, Shivraj Patil, was considered one of the main
obstacles in the last government to repealing the law — which brackets
homosexuality with bestiality and paedophilia. He and other conservatives in
the Cabinet and Parliament argued that homosexuality was “un-Indian” and
that repealing Section 377 would encourage delinquent behaviour, even though
it has been rarely enforced in the past decade.
“Public opinion and the current societal context in India does not favour the
deletion of the said offence from the statute book,” the Home Ministry said
in response to a challenge to the law in 2005.
Others argued that it was the only law that could be applied in cases of
homosexual child abuse and male rape.
Activists claim that the law violates the Indian Constitution, which
guarantees all citizens the right to equality and personal liberty, as well
as the UN’s International Covenant on Civil and Political Rights.
They also say that it leads to police harassment and encourages the spread of
HIV-Aids, which affects about 2.5 million people in India, by making it hard
for infected gay men to seek treatment. In 2001 a local non-governmental
organisation, the Naz Foundation, challenged the law’s constitutionality in
the Delhi High Court, arguing that it should no longer apply to consenting
adults. A ruling is expected next month.
The Naz Foundation mounted the challenge after police in the northern city of
Lucknow raided its offices and those of another NGO and detained four staff
members for 47 days on suspicion of running a gay “sex racket”.
The police said that HIV-Aids related information seized was obscene and
charged four staff under Section 377. The charges were dropped.
Sex acts
— Being gay is punishable by death in Iran, Mauritania, Saudi Arabia, Sudan
and Yemen
— Britain’s Sexual Offences Act (1967) permitted gay sex in private for
consenting adults
— The US bans gay sex among serving soldiers
Times Online
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