The Equilibrium of Rights
…it is the beauty of the issue that both rights of LGBTs and safety of children from peadophiles can be best achieved by giving the sexual minorities their rightful pride to come out in public and to legalise their sexual behaviour. The current cases of child abuse, in my opinion, are more because of ban on the gay sex, both social and legal ban…
Saurabh Dharmeshwari
With Delhi High Court’s path breaking verdict, the LGBT ghettos of Indian towns are on the threshold of what could be called the most unbelievable human rights accomplishment of the land of Conformists. The lesbians, gays, bisexuals and transvestites – keeping their little, secretive Greenwich villages and Harlems in cosmopolite suburbia hitherto – are overtly optimistic of the next blast of romance: the repeal of Article 377 of IPC nationally. Transgender are more confident and happier than ever before. These are times of historic reforms, no doubt.
The picture is not really so encouraging, though. The landmark ruling, together with Sunday’s Gay Rally and efforts of Naz Foundation, AIDS Control Organisations, Law, Planning and Human Rights Commissions, are hardly any pointer to a revolutionary metamorphosis taking place in our conservative minds. Look at the consternation clenching the Church, the VHP and the Islamic clerics; sense the reservations of society at the very thought of historic reforms; observe ruling Congress Party’s studied response to the milestone judgment…forget…who cares about human rights…in times of rivalry for abuse of law. Yeah, the march is only a quarter way through.
The landmark ruling is hardly any pointer to a revolutionary metamorphosis taking place in our conservative minds. Look at the consternation clenching the Church, the VHP and the Islamic clerics; sense the reservations of society at the very thought of historic reforms; observe ruling Congress Party’s studied response to the milestone judgment
This column, well, is about the obstructions yet to be crossed in the way of LGBTs Pride Parade to real pride, and to actual rights. Over the past week, there have been some unremitting attempts to undo the aftermath of worldly Stonewall rights with divinely, catastrophic Sodom and Gomorrah in the name of abuse and anarchy, sexual, that is. I am interested in broaching upon the topic because construing the state of affairs as all goody-goody, as fellow journalists have done seemingly out of enthusiasm, is an injustice to the cause of sexual minority in fact, if anything else.
The reasons causing opposition to the landmark reform are agreedly silly but needs attention. For society at large, it is a matter of so-called social values of a group of diverse communities united together by their myths, their inability to imagine mutual love making beyond traditional pair of male and female; for religious congregations, it is a question of commandments of Book. People can do any foolery, even thuggery in its name. In unison they call it a moral imbroglio.
Collect the pearls of resistance: it would not make it (Homosexuality) moral, people in general may think homosexuality was morally permissible… homosexual right was a misnomer, just as there is no right for the minority of people, who are kleptomaniacs or serial killers who say that they have innate tendencies to steal or kill…this the most mass appealing one, that too, a day before the verdict, emanating from Major Archbishop of Syro Malabar Church. No, I have no discriminations; I could have, well, quoted opposition from representatives of other religions as well but it is this which, to my mind, truly, and broadly, indicates the confusion of our society at the moment.
People, either unaware or skeptical of the 1973 medical study that for the first time categorized gay behaviour as normal as heterosexuality, are expected to take the reform this way given a decisive silence across country’s broad political spectrum and an absence of the type of campaign which TV channels relay to allay myths about leprosy and AIDS, Chhoone se pyar phailata hai, AIDS nahi. Shabana Azmi won this battle, but Celina Jaitley is to make a start on TV.
LGBTs cannot be put side by side kleptomaniacs or any other maniacs, not only because one’s instincts, according to medical science, are biological and other’s purely pschyo-pathological and so one is normal, natural while other abnormal, unnatural; but that the two classes are socially quite different, too. LGBTs co-exist with us, they have their private life and try to make it not affect others, most of them barring few exceptions; maniacs, on the contrary, are out to ruin whatever come to their lunatic fancy. LGBTs are not the criminals.
There is one more interesting statement from Church. According to Father Dominic Immanuel churches have no objection to decriminalisation of homosexuality but it should not be legalised. This one, rivaling the one mentioned above, was delivered after the verdict. If I am not wrong, what Father Dominic Immanuel meant by these remarks is that homosexuals should not be punished for their sexual orientation – no police raids in their secret Greenwich villages and Harlems, so as to speak – but they should not be allowed to declare their homosexuality publically. Yeah, something that once existed or perhaps still exists in the US army rulebook.
In its later remarks too, church, which is also relatively soft on the issue, maintains the element of taboo, and ignores that the whole movement is not about seeking freedom from police atrocities alone but about transforming the way people look at them, so the pride parades, that is, parades seeking pride in society, pride of being lesbian, gay, bisexuals and transvestites.
In religious camps, there is hullabaloo about sexual anarchy taking over the social ethics. This makes little sense. The sexual minority of the country is estimated to be 0.3% of the total population; and the remaining 99.97% people, having orientation to natural heterosexuality, could not have been swayed into anarchy of licentiousness by centuries of harlotry and decades of porn, which is of course more tempting to them. They still have their patience and culture and values, intact as ever.
In absence of political will and a nation wide campaign, any one sided attempt of the reform as current one by Naz foundation, gay activists and AIDS awareness outfits will only serve to strengthen the taboo if the ongoing opposition is an eye opener. The issue of child abuse has come handy to those opposed to the moves as an instrument to tilt the balance, the equilibrium of rights in their favour. They seek to make it a fight between children’s rights and LGBTs’ rights and want to make us choose one over the other, knowing that society cannot impart rights to peadophiles at the expense of sexual safety of their children.
Even judiciary’s caution not to drop that part of the colonial law which categorises sex with children and non-consenting adults as offense is not enough, nor is the talk of separate law for safety of children against paedophiles, for India’s tryst with compliance with law is dismally poor. The countries where LGBTs have won pride are countries where law is strictly followed with infringement being rare.
Even judiciary’s caution not to drop that part of the colonial law which categorises sex with children and non-consenting adults as offense is not enough, nor is the talk of separate law for safety of children against paedophiles, for India’s tryst with compliance with law is dismally poor, we are not a success even in checking women’s sexual exploitation at work places. The countries where LGBTs have won pride, where gay sex is legal and socially acceptable, where gays hold even high offices are countries where law is strictly followed with infringement being rare.
NGOs have done their part, now it is over to government. The whole reform, perhaps the biggest one after those which Raja Ram Mohan Roy effected facing the challenge of India’s one of the most conservative society in any historical period, requires revolutionary work on front of law and order and public awareness. It is the beauty of the issue that both rights of LGBTs and safety of children from peadophiles can be best achieved by giving the sexual minorities their rightful pride to come out in public and to legalise their sexual behaviour. The current cases of child abuse, in my opinion, are more because of ban on the gay sex, both social and legal ban. What is needed at the moment is to achieve this equilibrium of rights for the sake of imparting human rights, not for snatching them.
Sadly, deliberately achieved ideological logjam in political circles does not offer an immediate revolution. Just a battle has been won now, and there remains a whole war to be fought, which means some more decades.
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