LGBT RIGHTS ARE HUMAN RIGHTS
On June 30, the United Nations Human Rights
Council passed a resolution creating a post of an independent
expert on sexual orientation and gender identity.
This expert, will be tasked with the job of studying and
reporting annually on the nature, the cause, and the extent of
discrimination faced by lesbian, gay, bisexual and transgender
(LGBT) persons around the world.
In many ways, the establishment of the new post
exemplifies a growing global trend towards addressing the
egregious human rights violations suffered by LGBT persons.
But to us, in India, it must come as a matter of grave shame
that our country, in an act utterly unbecoming of a modern
progressive state, chose to abstain from voting altogether to
appoint the expert.
Sovereign rights
yy The issue of LGBT rights in India is a matter being
considered by the Supreme Court under a batch of
curative petitions filed by various institutions and
organisations
yy The Supreme Court is presently seized of cases
challenging the constitutionality of the law that
criminalises homosexuality. But, its also worth bearing
in mind that this fact.
yy The issue is sub judice, has scarcely stopped India
from voting to embrace a series of amendments that
weaken the larger resolution adopted to appoint an
independent expert.
yy The experts mission would ensure, at all costs, respect
for the sovereign right of every country to implement
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its own national laws in Indias case, this is a direct
reference to Section 377 of the Indian Penal Code,
which makes even consensual homosexual activity a
crime.
yy Therefore, any report of the newly appointed expert
would have to give sufficient weight to the fact
that Indias laws proscribe, and even criminalise,
homosexuality.
Make ethical choices
yy Over four years later, the Supreme Court reversed a
bench of two judges, through a judgment delivered
by Justice G.S. Singhvi, doggedly refused to see the
LGBT community as equal partners in our citizenry.
yy The court restored Section 377 to its archaic
ingloriousness, granting validity, in the process, to the
states ability to criminalise acts based on perceived
moral grounds.
yy Fundamental right of a person to be treated with equal
concern, and of the right that such persons have to be
allowed to freely make ethical choices on how they
seek to live their lives.
yy Section 377, plainly read, punishes with imprisonment
for life or for a term of up to 10 years any person who
voluntarily has carnal intercourse against the order of
nature with any man, woman or animal.
yy Fundamental iniquity in Section 377 is, in fact, evident
even from the notes of its drafter Lord Macaulay, who
had specifically aimed to enforce Victorian morality
through the criminal justice system.
SINCE 2004