Historic Judgment

"Indian Constitutional law does not permit the statutory criminal law to be held captive by the popular misconceptions of who the LGBTs are" (Chief Justice, Delhi High Court).

In a historic judgment today, the Delhi High Court ruled Section 377 of the Indian Penal Code unconstitutional in so far as it criminalizes consensual sex between adults in private. With the HC verdict being applicable throughout the country, India became the 127th country in the world to legalize gay sex. Hurrah!

It might have taken the world's largest democracy this long to review and revisit an old archaic law enacted during the British colonial rule, but as they say, better late than never. There were many who said this day would never come, but it did and how. The legal bench attacked prejudices against homosexuality and said, "Moral indignation, howsoever strong, is not a valid basis for overriding individuals’ fundamental rights of dignity and privacy. Constitutional morality must outweigh the argument of public morality, even if it be the majoritarian view." It also added, that "(T)here is almost unanimous medical and psychiatric opinion that homosexuality is not a disease or disorder (...) Homosexuality was removed from the diagnostic manual of mental disorders in 1973 after reviewing evidence (and) In 1992, the WHO removed homosexuality from its list of mental illness (...)."

Read the full text of the Delhi HC judgment (pdf.) here. Also, the debate which until now was doing rounds in select circles only, is now picking up pan-India on whether or not a legal provision can change societal perspective. The question being asked is, "can the HC verdict change social attitude towards gays?" I think this question is hugely misplaced for three reasons:
1. It is hasty, seemingly looking for quick overnight solutions.
2. It positions society at the receiving end of law and forgets, that social and legal are in fact, dialectically related.
3. It assumes change as some one time Aha! moment and forgets that it is procedural and already taking place, however slow and/or subtle.

A progessive law empowers not just once, but over and over again by:
1. Safeguarding the rights of LGBT identified/questioning individuals. This further allows them to put a face to alternate sexuality and challenge any ignorant imagination of it as immoral or sin.
2. Making outreach for HIV/AIDS prevention/protection/safe practices education possible. This is huge in a country like India where limited health care and social stigmatization have ruined the lives of many.
In this context, a revised law is definitely a start and a step in the right direction. I believe it will act as a catalyst for change at all levels: a change whose pace might be determined by visibility.

Cheers!

The Debate Diagrammed

Timeline to the changes in Same-Sex Marriage Laws in the US [source: Good Magazine]



"Patrick Farley, one of the great webcomics creators, has a sharp editorial cartoon up -- a flowchart explaining the gay marriage debate" [source].

Perspective

Source: "Marriage Equality March," The A2 Chronicle, Nov. 15, 2008

The SC and the International Center are collaborating to create a website providing information to LGBTQ international students and to LGBTQ students who are considering studying, working or traveling abroad. In order to understand student perspectives, the following survey was created. Here are my responses:

Describe your experience as an international LGBTQ student at the University.
Excellent. The University has given me the utmost confidence to be out in thought and action. It has provided me with the opportunity to serve the LGBTQ community on campus and learn more about diverse issues affecting us. It has given me the agency to BE the change that I wish to see and bring about.

What do you wish you'd known about US culture and LGBTQ issues before coming to the University?
As an International student, I would have loved to be introduced to the resources on Campus during our month long orientation workshops with the IC and Rackham.

How have you gotten support as an LGBTQ international student? For example, have you accessed resources on-campus or in the surrounding comunity in A2?
Absolutely. I have worked with the SC in different capacities and also contributed to policy level changes at Rackham. In both instances, volunteering my time, participating in discussions and meeting new people was a great way to become increasingly comfortable with my own sexuality.

Did you have trouble adjusting to the US as an LGBTQ international student? Please explain.
None at all. Coming from a country where LGBTQ individuals/issues are still not given due respect, it was fantastic to be embraced without judgment here.

Have you had any issues with your family or home culture and your LGBTQ identity? Please explain.
It is an ongoing battle and a very difficult one at that. I often say, "acts of translation is an ongoing process." Through my volunteering work, I wish to win the support of my family and enlarge their understanding of issues at stake. I am trying and so are they.

Have you had any issues with immigration or other legal issues relating your LGBTQ identity? Please explain.
Not applicable.

What advice do you have for other LGBTQ international students?
U-M is a center of thought, conversation and action. LGBTQ international students - either open about their sexuality, in different phases of coming out or closeted, should make the most of the available resources, people, educational programs and activities on campus. It is a place that will make you comfortable, regardless of your orientation, gender identity and/or gender expression. It is an urban microcosm that will fill you with confidence and provide you with enough motivation and courage to continuously work toward improving the climate for LGBTQ individuals, wherever you go.

Good luck!

Advocacy Matters!

This story is special.

On May 5, SC Director Jackie Simpson was honored with the Distinguished Diversity Leaders Award, which is sponsored by the Office of the Provost and University Human Resources. From among ninety nominees, Jackie was chosen for her dedicated work around issues of Non-Discrimination Policy and Education at the University.

I have had the privilege to work with Jackie on various projects while serving as a member of the Center’s Student Advisory Board. In her capacity as the co-chair of this initiative, she guided our ideas and worked with us to develop them into strategies for effective action. She provided us with opportunities to discuss our concerns with several invited members of the academia and continued to inform each of our meetings with her experience in areas of advocacy and education.

All those who have worked with Jackie in different capacities, will agree that she is truly deserving of this and many such awards. Her quiet confidence, dedication and humility are her winning strengths and she has been absolutely superb in her role as a leader, mentor and team-worker.

Congratulations, Jackie! and thanks for being there always. I am so proud of you.

Acts of Translation

Visibility is not about presence alone. It is also about the presence of absence where, absence is not that which is not visible but that which is not given thought. If sexuality is an invisible trait, making it visible implies translating what is not widely understood. It demands outreach. It requires constant acts of translation of traits that sexual minorities embody but may not make/be evident.

This was my argument at the A-Team Annual Meeting last week. The board members, including myself, had gathered to reflect on our work of this past year and evaluate our current strengths and limitations. Our greatest contribution was the proposal for Gender-Neutral Housing and a new forum entitled International + LGBT formed in collaboration with the International Center to address issues specific to International LGBT identified/questioning scholars and individuals at the University. Both these were initiatives of students. Both these marked the start of a series of conversations to follow. And finally, both these were markers of the outreach potential of our team.

But this is not where we concluded. Continuing on the idea of translation, we felt that our efforts of this past year will need to assume a descriptive framework for new board members to begin work from. We argued that description rather than prescription is what will both sustain this body and facilitate newer conversations on thoughtful topics needing action. This was to remind us that A-team stood for Action Team – action informed by thought, conversation, debate and research.

Thank you Jackie for being such brilliant support throughout. You are terrific!

The Argument

India's social and physical landscape continues to weave cultures and sub-cultures. It is the world's largest democracy and quite remarkably, a world within a world - always in a state of flux. In this land of changing perceptions, the social understanding of human sexuality too has seen marked shifts from pre-colonial era to the present. During the pre-colonial times, homosexual acts and relationships were not just tolerated but also tastefully depicted and discussed. Today, they are being frowned upon and tagged as illegal thanks to a Victorian piece of legislation: the Sec. 377 of the IPC.

I have always wondered then how long before the country once again recognizes, acknowledges and legalizes same-sex bonding between consenting adults. While the Delhi HC is currently deliberating the appeal for the "reading down" of this draconian law, V. Doctor, a noted journalist and gay rights activist, shares his knowledge of the legal tangle and the implications of either/or verdict for queer individuals in the country.

Here's the excerpt.

"1. When should we expect the verdict of the High Court (HC)?

Any day now. We don’t know for sure because the HC will only let us know the day before that they are posting a decision. So it depends on how long the judges take to do their decision. The arguments have been thorough, this is quite a high profile case and the judges are known to be independent and conscientious, so a decision should be due soon. But we don’t know when.

2. If it is positive and welcomes the requests of the associations what effects will it have?

Strictly speaking the decision, whatever it is, will be a limited one - it will be limited to the state of Delhi, and will probably also be limited in time too, because it will almost definitely be appealed to the Supreme Court (SC) for a final decision. If it is positive then our opponents who include an AIDS denial group and a right wing nationalist, possibly supported by Home Ministry, will almost definitely appeal it to the SC, which could apply a stay order. If it is negative, the queer rights groups could appeal it (but we haven’t really got a firm strategy for this yet).

But this is technical. If we win it will be a really big symbolic win, because it will be the first time a really high court in India is pronouncing on the subject of homosexuality. Also, among the HCs in India, the decisions of the Delhi, Bombay and Chennai HCs are often given particular importance because they are particularly well respected courts. The decision will probably not be binding on other courts, but it will send a strong signal to the legal community on the direction that queer rights in India should take.

We already have evidence of how this case is affecting the law, even before it is decided. About a year or two ago, a young man called D. Hope was accused of violating this law in Goa. The HC of Goa gave him bail on the grounds that the fact that this case was being fought showed that attitudes towards homosexuality are changing in India.

3. Will the crime of homosexuality as stated in article 377 be abolished in all of India?

As I stated, no. The decision will be limited to Delhi, but its effect will be felt across India. Also, I should make it clear we are not asking for Sec. 377 to go, but are only asking for a very narrow change - we are asking to courts to declare that it does not apply to consenting adults. This is because the law still has use in cases of child sex abuse and male rape. Ideally there should be a new law to deal with these, but in its absence we hope the courts will use their power to exclude consenting adults from this law.

4. How do you think the majority of the Indian population feels about lgbt people’s civil rights?

I don’t think the majority of India’s population feels anything about LGBT people, positive or negative. I think there is less overt homophobia here than in Europe and certainly the US, though that doesn’t necessarily translate into automatic acceptance.

Part of the homophobia is simply due to less visibility and understanding of homosexuality - so once that increases, there will be more homophobia. There is awareness of forms of alternate sexuality that have long been part of Indian society, like the hijra community. There is acceptance of this, but it comes with very definite prejudices some of which are extended to the gay community.

In some cases we have leapfrogged a bit, so elite groups, for example, like those in Bollywood or the media, are often gay friendly because they’ve picked it up from abroad. But its a form of acceptance that comes with its own stereotypes that can be a problem. Also, there is a general fear of people being too open - you often hear parents telling their kids that they are OK with them being gay, but they don’t want them to march on the streets for it.

I think there is some truth in that Indian society tends to be fairly tolerant, though its easy to make too much of this. But homophobia in its formalized form is a Western imposition on Indian society in the form of Sec. 377, and I do think, optimistically, that once it goes, progress in India will be rapid."

(...)

[via Puta: visit the website to read the complete interview. Interview by M. Cecconi and Translations by M. Cioni and T. Kutinjac]. Emphasis added by the author.

Although V. Doctor provides a valuable insight, I am not convinced by his claim that increased visibility increases homophobia in society. His is an overly simplistic argument and one that describes visibility as a monolithic representation of sexuality, negative enough to induce fear and disgust in society (More on this to follow).

Inclusive

It's great to see Merriam-Webster, one of the oldest dictionaries, carry an inclusive definition of "marriage." It reads, "mar.riage 1 a (1) : the state of being united to a person of the opposite sex as husband or wife in a consensual and contractual relationship recognized by law (2): the state of being united to a person of the same sex in a relationship like that of a traditional marriage <same-sex marriage> b: (...)"

Not just this, Boston based Houghton-Mifflin, publisher of the American Heritage Dictionary of the English Language, had made changes to its definition of marriage way back in the year 2000. This month, the editors of the Oxford Dictionary too proposed to update the meaning of the word marriage to "the condition of being a husband or wife; the relation between persons married to each other; matrimony" (via NYdaily news).

Are people reading enough these days?