Teenagers would find sexual awakening easier to handle if sex education was taught in schools and parents told their children about the birds and bees. A working knowledge of sexually transmitted diseases (STDs) and access to contraception would also make the learning process less dangerous. Regardless, teenagers learn, if only from older peers, songs and stories. Even societies that make it a crime for boys and girls to see each other have love stories — chiefly heterosexual.
The road is more complex for the large minority with non-mainstream sexual orientations. There are few songs extolling the wonder of boy meets boy, or girl meets girl. There are huge taboos about even admitting to a carnal interest in the same sex.
Hence, lesbians, gays, bisexuals and trannies (LGBT) suffer from larger doses of sexual confusion than straight folks. In the absence of a supportive social climate, many LGBT teens experience severe depression. This category is at higher risk for suicide because of the unnecessary burden of guilt and social ostracism.
Sexual orientation is hard-wired into humans long before puberty. It can’t be “cured” — there is nothing to cure. Criminalising acts committed by consenting adults doesn’t “cure” them; it just causes more guilt and confusion.
India has incredibly bad laws in this regard. The Indian Penal Code (IPC), 1861 reflects the morality of Victorian Britons. Consenting acts between men are criminalised under IPC Section 377 as unnatural practices. But at the same time, the rape law (IPC 375) isn’t gender neutral (though it’s being rewritten). Sexual assault on a male doesn’t count as rape. This is despite it being endemic in prisons as well as a popular interrogation “technique”.
The existence of Section 377 created a revenue channel for the lower rungs of the law enforcement machinery by encouraging the shakedown of gays. It also prevented the distribution of condoms in jails (because it would condone a criminal act), and hence guaranteed the spread of STDs in prisons.
There are further implications of criminalising LGBT behaviour. India’s tax code favours couples, and inheritance favours a surviving spouse. If same-sex relationships are criminal and marriage out of the question, LGBTs are clearly discriminated against.
At the social level, things are more nuanced because, wonder of wonders, it isn’t 1861. One side of the picture is retrogressive. Sex education isn’t on curricula — it’s embarrassing. Parents don’t teach it — it’s embarrassing. Many believe LGBTs can be “cured”. An even larger number see an opportunity to indulge in the national pastime of regulating the private behaviour of other people.
But there’s also a body of liberal opinion that favours decriminalising sexual acts between consenting adults. The Indian LGBT community is, thankfully, organised enough to leverage that. In July 2009, in a landmark judgment, the Delhi High Court struck down IPC 377.
Random hordes claiming to represent various shades of religious sentiment have since appealed to the Supreme Court against the Delhi High Court order. The government has been as confused as any sexually awakening teenager in its attitude, doing a flip-flop between “it’s immoral” to “we have no opinion”.
Most surveys find that between four and 15 per cent of national populations self-identify as “LGB”. For obvious reasons, the higher numbers correlate with nations that have no legal barriers against gay sex and attach zero social stigma to it. In the 1950s, when it was still criminal in the US, the Kinsey Report said 37 per cent of Americans reported at least one “homosexual experience”.
If the Indian LGBT population is at the lower end, at four per cent, there are as many Indian LGBTs as there are Sikhs and Christians put together. If it’s at the higher end, there are more Indian LGBTs than Indian Muslims. Should we even contemplate having laws that victimise such a large minority for something that is strictly their personal business?
