For the longest time I loved my country for two reasons – our
freedom and the way we co-exist peacefully despite our varied differences. I
took pride in the fact that our country has so many different people yet we
kept our prejudices mostly to ourselves and loved our neighbours whole-heartedly. There was
discrimination but in most cases we were not open about it and dealt with it in the most elegant manner. I thought we were
progressing and that the discrimination in our minds was lessoning as well.
And then came the Supreme Court ruling that states homosexuals
to be criminals in the eyes of law unless decided otherwise by the parliament.
Hopefully this absurd ruling will be revoked and Supreme
Court will decide in the favour of Gay community. Hopefully this will not go to
our lethargic parliament who will keep the bill for 20 years only to pass it
back to the Supreme Court. Hopefully we will move forward but for now, we’ve become a
nation of archaic beliefs and I undoubtedly don’t want to be a part of a society that follows a regressive school of thought.
Really, who are we to judge? Each one of us has qualities that make
us different than the other. What is right for you might be wrong for me. Does
that make you a criminal in my eyes? A person who goes against the rules of
society is as it is fighting a hard battle. If the law of the state doesn’t stand
by him, how will he stand up for himself? And if he cannot come out in the open
based on the fact that he/she will be called a criminal if he does, do you realise the
increase in the number of suicide cases? So many would get married out of
societal pressure and then cheat on their spouses because their natural desires
would not be fulfilled. Even more will end up having children and then breaking
their family in due course of time because their relationship will not be as it
should be.
A few years back I told a friend that I might not have
children. She fumed and asked me why did I get married in that case? That was
the first time I associated love and marriage with procreation. Before that, I
just wanted to be happy spending the rest of my life with a person I loved. For
me, first came friendship, then emotional attachment followed by physical
attraction. Having children was never a part of the deal, was it? Similar is
the case with people who choose to love the same gender. If being with that
person makes them happy, why bring in biology in it?
Morality and procreation aside, who is the Supreme Court to
call a person unnatural based on consensual sex? What goes on in my bedroom is
none of their business. If gay sex is unnatural, then anal and oral sex should
be deemed unnatural as well. Go ahead, call all of us, heck, yourselves, criminals.
It is sad that the world’s largest democracy’s highest law
making body has failed us. This is clear discrimination which none of us should
support. Straight or gay, it is OUR choice. And we will not let anyone put us
in jail for that.
