Love is not a crime !!

Law can only change the law, not the behavior of people !! Abrogation of Section 377!! It will take decades before we can eradicate the stigma of being gay or transgender, as a homophobic population will continue to judge and discriminate On September 6, 2018, India saw the victory of law and love. The five bench Supreme Court unanimously passed an order on IPC Section 377, making the country free for everyone – including gays and transgenders for the first time since 1861. India has become a better country since then. Many trans and homo children, both girls, and boys have been violated within families and their parents have long lived in constant fear of their children being considered criminals. The Supreme Court ruling will give solace to them. But the law can only change the law, not attitudes and behavior of people. It will take many more years or decades before we can eradicate the stigma of being gay or transgender. While many remain indifferent, the trans and homophobic population will continue to judge and discriminate. At best, many of them will be indifferent and ignore their existence and at worst, we will continue to see hate crimes and violence targeting them. Moral policing often does not have a relationship with what the law says or what the reality is. The following opinions, which do not have any grounding based on facts and experience, typify the mindset of several religious leaders and fanatics: “They can be what they want to but let them not advertise it”, “So now they are going to ask for gay marriages and spoil our culture”, “All this has been brought to our country from the West”. So on and so forth. Changing such thought processes is an uphill task and can be achieved if it is tackled effectively on three fronts: increase solidarity from within and empower the community, sensitize and engage with policymakers, and educate masses through platforms that involve members of the community and the general population. As long as the general population does not interact and engage with community members, it will not be aware that there is a human being behind a gay or transgender identity. And that is simply not a matter of just sex or gender! Opening the door Coming out as LGBTQ+ is never easy, even in societies that are supportive and protective of the community’s rights. The process begins with accepting oneself, followed by asserting that identity to the world. Judicial reform may create an enabling platform to come out, but social realities don’t necessarily change in sync. So the battle must be fought as much inside courtrooms, as inside drawing rooms, classrooms, and meeting rooms, every day of our lives. Will someone who hasn’t been able to express their sexuality for, say, 10 years, be able to overcome this ‘taboo’ overnight?" asks Atri Kar, a 28-year-old school teacher in Kolkata. Kar, who came out as a transwoman in 2014, fought a legal battle against the state of West Bengal in 2017 to include the third gender in application forms for all public offices and won the case. “When I began sex reassignment surgery a few years ago, I already knew that if you want to have a revolution, you have to start it at your home," Kar adds. “If I am unable to sensitize people I have grown up around, how will I be able to convince the rest of the world?" One of the most affecting stories that emerged on 6 September was of 25-year-old Arnab Nandy, a Mumbai-based tech professional who came out as gay in a Facebook post. Pictured with his mother planting a kiss on his cheek and his father beaming at the camera, Nandy is seated between his parents, who are holding up a poster saying: MY SON IS NOT A CRIMINAL ANYMORE. Nandy says he has been out since he was 23 but told his mother about his sexuality three months before the ruling. It wasn’t easy to break the news to the family, more so because his father is a government employee and was worried about Section 377. “I didn’t want to come out to the entire world unless my parents were ready to fight for it," he adds. The post not only went viral, but some people even put it up as their WhatsApp display picture. Continuing task It is in this sense that we have to understand the work still to be done after this remarkable judgment. If a law has taken root in the social, cultural, and legal consciousness, the challenge of extirpating the prejudice which the law has fostered is still immense. One has to only think of the prejudice and violence Denotified Tribes still face at the hands of the state and society even after the colonial-era Criminal Tribes Act was repealed in the late 1940s. It is this immense task of combating the prejudicial attitudes encoded in Section 377 which has to continue. Justice Nariman was cognizant of this challenge and mandated the Union of India to give “wide publicity to the judgment” and conduct “sensitization and awareness training for government officials and in particular police officials in the light of observations contained in the judgment”. The implications of a transformative Constitution are wide-ranging and its power can be harnessed by inter-caste, inter-religious and same-sex couples, all of whom are battling a form of social morality which is at odds with the Constitution. Justice Chandrachud called “the right to love not just a separate battle for LGBTQ individuals but a battle for us all”. The court, through this decision, has harnessed the transformative power of the Constitution and amplified a way of thinking rooted in the values of respect for dignity, equality, and fraternity. If this way of thinking, rooted as it is the struggle against forms of discrimination perpetrated by a conservative social morality, becomes more widely accepted, India will be less of majoritarian democracy and more of a form of constitutional democracy. I had no idea to write on this topic whereas aI d planned to write an article about the Indian education system !! on Monday august 3 I read a small article on page 8 talking about the "talk it out " campaign by times of India. today being Wednesday I might have read that article at least 2o times. Each time I read the article there are new curiosities that arise, a new question arises but an answer to all those questions can be found only within your mind. I recently saw Ayushman Khurrana's "shubh mangal zyada savdhan" a gay love story a line from the last song of the movie "aadmi hoon aadmi se pyaar karta hoon" these seven words may not mean much to us but mean so much to the LGBTQ+ community. it has had an impact on me since then ... even while writing this article I have been humming that song all time and my sister thinks I am mad so I would like to wrap by saying love yourself, be you, love your homosexuality, and always remember all humans are bisexuals leaning towards heterosexuality and homosexuality at different phases of life, most people either deny it, repress it or ignore it but my humble request is never ignored yourself !! Be happy with the way you are. love always triumphs !!