DISCOURSE ON HOMOSEXUALITY
By: Bennet Paes, Assolna
As long as people copulate, sodomite or masturbate in private, what does it
matter whether it is legal or not? However, whether it is ethical or not, only
their conscience can dictate. None others, whether courts of law or religious
authorities can pass judgments, simply because they don’t know what has been
going on behind closed doors or behind the camera’s eye.
True, homosexuality may have been in practice for centuries and gone on
merrily since then. Why then was there so much hype and dancing in the streets
after the Delhi High Court’s verdict in its favour? Earlier the gays had
protested against harassment by the police and by decency-driven public. But
now it looks like the revelers have the green card to flaunt their hitherto
suspect practices in public, under the protection of law. However, the revelers
may still have to face that ‘hijra’ type contempt in a country where
discrimination is so rampant, leave alone against colour or creed, unless they
refrain from taking their new-found euphoria to the market place.
A priest said on a tv channel that the Catholic church, by the very fact that
it is called catholic, does recognize the freedom of every individual, and thus
accepts the verdict of the Delhi H.C. allowing gays this freedom. So said a
Muslim representative, too. However, what they both vehemently rejected is the
very act of a sexual relationship between two persons of the same sex,
consenting or not. And by no means this implies that they mean to impose their
views, as indeed of the views of millions of morality-conscious Indians, on
these so-called ‘sexually liberated’ bunch of men and women.
From time immemorial institutions and societies of whatever color or creed
anywhere in the world have by instinct acknowledged marriage as between a man
and a woman, i.e. between two persons of opposite sex. World dictionaries and
encyclopedias also define marriage as such.
However, if, in the light of Delhi’s H.C’s dubious de-criminalisation verdict
on homosexuality, gays and lesbians also claim the right to be married, and if
their human rights need to be recognized under the law, there could still be a
way out by calling that union by another name, like “HOMORRIAGE”, for example.
How about that! After all, a rose by any other name would smell as sweet - even
to anti-establishment elements.
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