LGBTQ+ Indians on Tuesday pledged to keep fighting for marriage equality after the Supreme Court declined to legalize same-sex weddings, but said they feared a long wait due to the government’s opposition to gay unions.
A five-judge bench left the contentious issue to parliament to decide, dashing the hopes of millions of LGBTQ+ people in the world’s most populous country, five years after the court finally scrapped a colonial-era ban on gay sex.
It also ruled that same-sex couples did not have the right to adopt children.
Illustration: Mountain People
“We may stumble on the march to equality, but we will continue to march forward,” said Saattvic, who goes by one name, a gay Indian man living with his partner in Vancouver, Canada.
Calling the court’s decision “disappointing,” Saattvic said it had vindicated his move from India to a country where same-sex marriage is allowed.
“I feel sad that my own country will not yet have me as I am, and will not treat me as an equal... I hope that changes soon,” said Saattvic, one of more than a dozen petitioners in the case.
The court accepted the government’s offer to set up a panel to consider granting certain non-marital rights to same-sex couples on access to services and facilities such as joint accounts in banks and pensions, from which they are currently barred.
However, Philip C. Philip, a Delhi-based LGBTQ+ rights activist, said that without clarity about who would sit on the panel — or a timeline for the parliament to frame a law — the offer was “completely hollow.”
There was no immediate response from the government to the court ruling, but Indian Prime Minister Narendra Modi’s nationalist Bharatiya Janata Party administration had opposed petitions to the court on the issue, saying same-sex marriage is not “comparable with the Indian family unit concept of a husband, a wife and children.”
Many LGBTQ+ Indians say that means parliament is unlikely to support equal marriage, at least in the short term, meaning they will remain at a disadvantage compared with straight couples.
“We go back to living complicated and difficult lives in the wake of a government that refuses to see us,” said Konika Roy, a Mumbai-based bisexual woman.
While LGBTQ+ Indians have made significant strides since the 2018 gay sex ruling — from their portrayal on television to more representation in politics and inclusive corporate policies — many still fear coming out.
They say discrimination and abuse are rife, preventing them from accessing jobs, healthcare, education and housing. Gay couples often struggle to rent homes or make medical decisions for each other in emergencies because they are not married.
Parul, a finance professional, and her partner have given each other power of attorney in the event of a health emergency, in case hospitals refuse to accept them as next-of-kin.
Like many gay couples, they hoped the Supreme Court might reach a decision that would sweep away such difficulties and let them marry in India.
“The expectation was quite low,” said Parul, who goes by one name and now intends to marry her partner in Denmark even though she is unsure over whether the marriage certificate will be accepted for joint bank accounts or insurance schemes in India. “It’s a fight every time,” she said.
However, despite the court’s decision on marriage, some campaigners said the judges had made positive observations in their decision, for example saying that transgender people in heterosexual relationships can marry under existing laws.
“Things are moving positively so let’s keep our spirits high,” said Padma Iyer, mother of Harish Iyer, an outspoken gay rights activist and one of the petitioners in the case.
Padma, the cofounder of Rainbow Parents, a collective of parents of children who identify as LGBTQ+, sparked nationwide debate about gay marriage eight years ago when she put an advert in a Mumbai newspaper seeking a groom for her son.
“We can’t rest. We know what the struggle is going to be for our children,” she said.
“I don’t know when we will get peace for this community,” she said.
As India’s six-week-long general election grinds past the halfway mark, Indian Prime Minister Narendra Modi’s messaging has shifted from confident to shrill. After the first couple of phases of polling showed a 3 percentage point drop in turnout, Modi and his party leaders have largely stopped promoting their accomplishments of the past 10 years — or, for that matter, the “Modi guarantees” offered in the Bharatiya Janata Party’s (BJP) manifesto for the next five. Instead, making the majority Hindu population fear and loathe Muslims seems to be the BJP’s preferred talking point. Modi went on the offensive in an April 21
As Ukraine leads the global fight for democracy, Taiwan, facing a potential war with China, should draw lessons from Ukraine’s cyberwarfare success. Taiwan has been enhancing its arsenal with advanced weapons from the West in anticipation of a possible full-scale invasion. However, Taipei should also consider Ukraine’s effective digital warfare, notably the “IT [information technology] Army,” a decentralized force instrumental in Kyiv’s cybercampaigns. In February 2022, Russia’s invasion of Ukraine marked the onset of a significant cyberwar, where fears of a “digital Pearl Harbor” in Ukraine were unmet, thanks to robust cyberdefenses backed by Western public and private support. This led
Chinese President Xi Jinping (習近平) is attempting to create an alternative international world order to the US-dominated model. China has benefited hugely from the current order since former Chinese leader Deng Xiaoping (鄧小平) opened up its economy five decades ago. Countries can be categorized as continental or maritime, and to a great degree this determines their optimum foreign policy. China is continental, as is Russia. The US initially followed a continental foreign policy, before it settled on a maritime model. The British empire was so successful because a tiny island kingdom built a formidable naval presence. The US-dominated world order, stabilized by
With the addition this year of Sweden and last year Finland to NATO, the Baltic Sea has been dubbed a “NATO lake” by some analysts. A glance at a map shows that is largely (but not completely) true — the coastline has a couple of slivers of Russian territory. The rest of the coastal littoral is in NATO hands: Sweden, Finland, Estonia, Latvia, Lithuania, Poland, Germany and Denmark. Russia controls a bit of coast between Lithuania and Poland because of its strange enclave of Kaliningrad. Russian President Vladimir Putin remains in control of the far eastern corner of the Baltic Sea