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NEW DELHI – The Supreme Court of India ruled Thursday that homosexual sex is not a crime, representing a major victory for millions of people in South Asia, victims of harassment and discrimination for more than 150 years. 377.
The Supreme Court overturned its own 2013 ruling that the colonial law criminalizing homosexual sex was not unconstitutional. This decision overturned the 2009 Court of First Instance ruling that the law should not apply to consenting sex between consenting adults in private.
Until Thursday's judgment, India – the world's largest democracy – was part of more than 70 countries, including Afghanistan, Nigeria, Syria, Sri Lanka, and Pakistan, where homosexual sex is illegal. Intersex Association, a Geneva-based advocacy group.
In India, the law prohibiting same-sex relations was a provision of the Indian Penal Code introduced in 1860 by British leaders.
In an appeal to the Supreme Court in 2016, five leading petitioners – a journalist, a chief, a dancer, a hotelier and a business consultant – asked the court to declare the law unconstitutional by saying that it violated their rights. sexuality, choice of sexual partner, life, privacy, dignity and equality ", as well as other fundamental rights guaranteed by the Indian constitution to all its citizens.
The petitioners argued that the Victorian law "obliges LGBT people to choose between either breaking the law or living a life without love or fellowship, and being false in relation to their natural identity.
The law has found the most support from conservative religious leaders who have worked to block legal efforts to suppress it, most of them arguing in the courts that homosexuality is a sin.
Human rights groups say that if the risk of conviction under the law was rare, it created a climate of fear in Indian society, largely conservative. The authorities also exposed LGBT people to blackmail and harassment.
The 2016 petition to the Supreme Court that resulted in Thursday's ruling revealed that one of the applicants had had to abandon his plans to become a public servant because he feared for his career prospects "due to the criminalization of his orientation. sexual. "
Write to Krishna Pokharel at [email protected]
