Gay Rights: India Decriminalizes Gay Sex

With an estimated LGTBQ population of 78 million, any change — or lack of it — made to Section 377 of India’s Penal Code would have far-reaching effects. On Thursday, the Supreme Court of India declared Section 377 unconstitutional, stating that “Sexual orientation of an individual is natural and discrimination on the basis of sexual orientation is a violation of Freedom of Expression”.

The decision also effectively brings down the number of people living in countries where being gay is illegal from 42 percent to 24 percent. Read this again… from 42 to 24 percent!

The road towards this monumental ruling has been a long one, with cases filed against Section 377 in 1994 and 2001 languishing in courts before a Delhi high court ruled against the ban in 2009. However, this was overturned in 2013 by the Supreme Court.

It was only during a 2017 on privacy that activists saw an opportunity to challenge the law once more. In an interview with The Guardian, Delhi-based lawyer and legal scholar Gautam Bhatia said “In August 2017 the supreme court held there was a fundamental right to privacy, and as part of that, five judges said the 2013 decision was wrong.

“It was unprecedented. The judges commented on a completely unconnected case to say it was wrong. But once they said it, with the imprimatur of a full bench behind it, section 377 was gone, implicitly if not formally.”

A lot of activists say that Section 377 criminalized what was accepted practice in India before colonization. The anti-sodomy law, the result of conservative Victorian mores at the time, was imposed on India when it was still a colony of the British empire.

Do we have any Adam4Adam blog readers in India? What’s the atmosphere there right now? With this win, what’s going to be the next battleground for the LGBTQ community in India? Share your thoughts and stories with us in the comments section below and DM us on Instagram, we’ll share your profile and send some love on our page!