Why Indian opponents of same-sex marriage are so horrified at the US verdict
one of the most influential courts in the world ruled in a 5-4 decision that same-sex marriage is legal. The US Supreme Court went on to define the idea of marriage within the folds of love and commitment. “Rising from the most basic human needs, marriage is essential to our most profound hopes and aspirations,” wrote Justice Anthony Kennedy for the majority.
This decision ended several decades of debates in US law and policy on marriage, religion, and the freedom of states over central government institutions. But while the US Supreme Court might have had the last word on same sex marriage in the US, here in India the debate is still rife.
Within weeks of the Delhi High Court decision in 2009 legalising gay sex, the Supreme Court of India received more than a dozen appeals filed by fringe religious organisation which, incoherently, but not without conviction argued that their opposition was linked to the fear that this would lead to gays and lesbians getting married.
But in the real world...
However, Indian gays and lesbians ‒ taking a leaf from the inter-faith and inter-caste runaway weddings ‒ have been marrying already, at least for a while. In 1987, news emerged that two policewomen, Leela and Urmila, in Bhopal, had been suspended because they had married each other. It was, of course, not a legal wedding: at best, a Bollywoodesque run-away temple satpadi wedding with a favourable pundit and an exchange of varmalas.
The indomitable spirit of this couple in love did not necessarily catalyse the modern day gay rights movement in India. But it has ‒ at least for some of us ‒ served as a continuous reminder of both the aspirations and possibilities that lie at the heart of the struggle for gay rights.
source link: http://scroll.in/article/737216/why-indian-opponents-of-same-sex-marriage-are-so-horrified-at-the-us-verdict
(g.yuktha lakshmi)
