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Indian gay rights activists welcome minister's call for court to review gay sex ban
ABC Radio Australia - December 1, 2015
Gay sex is still punishable by imprisonment in India, homosexuality is condemned by influential religious leaders, and gay and lesbian couples routinely face discrimination and harassment.
In 2009, Delhi's High Court ruled that the government was constitutionally prohibited from regulating consensual sex between adults, but after an appeal by Hindu and Christian groups amongst others, that decision was overruled by India's supreme court in 2013.
It is that judgement that influential finance minister Arun Jaitley said "needed to be reconsidered". Mt Jaitley told a literature panel discussion that when "you have millions of people involved in this, you can't nudge them off".
Lawyer and gay rights campaigner Danish Sheikh has fought numerous legal battles against section 377 of India's penal code. "So the story goes back to 1860 when the Indian penal code was enacted," he said.
"Essentially it took off from this colonial anxiety to regulate sodomy in particular. The law was essentially used to target LGBT individuals, either directly through prosecution but much more indirectly through persecution, so through blackmail, they were tortured – I mean it still continues even now."
Harish Iyer, whose mother placed India's first classified ad seeking a husband for her son, said instead of telling the court what to do, Mr Jaitley should instead persuade his conservative colleagues in the Hindu nationalist BJP government to abolish the law. "Soccer is what they're playing with us," he said.
"We are like balls being thrown from the parliament to the court and the court to the parliament. Now the government is saying 'no the court has to decide', so somewhere someone has to take decision – and if Mr Jaitley feels very strongly he should take a decision, and he should convince his ministers and his friends in his party which is the ruling party to actually take a decision."
Lawyer Danish Sheikh agrees, saying although prosecutions for sex between consulting adults are rare, as long as the law remains, it will be used to intimidate.
"In the meantime people are getting arrested, people are getting blackmailed, harassed, discriminated at the workplace simply because there is this law exists on the statute books," he said.
"We need this section to just be erased off the statute books, and that's something that only the legislature can do."
India's Supreme court has agreed to hear a challenge to its 2013 ruling upholding the ban – but it's not clear when that will happen.
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