INDIA:INDIA'S FEDERAL government views homosexuality as a "disease" and believes that if legalised, it would "devastate" society as more people would indulge in gay sex.
"Aids is already spreading in the country and if gay sex is legalised then people would start indulging in such practices saying that the High Court has approved it," assistant solicitor general PP Malhotra said in the court in response to a petition to "scale down" a Victorian-era law that has been under judicial review since 2001. "Our constitution does not talk about sexual orientation. Our moral and ethical values are different," Mr Malhotra, said reacting to the appeal that seeks to amend Section 377 of India's Criminal Procedure Code dating back to 1828. This law classifies homosexuality as an "unnatural offence" equated to sex with animals and paedophilia and carries a sentence of up to 14 years in jail and fines.
Activists said the law had rendered gay people and organisations promoting Aids awareness vulnerable to frequent police harassment. They claim the law has caused many homosexuals to commit suicide across India.
India's gay rights activists agitating to repeal the law have an unlikely ally in federal health minister Anbumani Ramadoss who wants to decriminalise the statute believing it would help stop the spread of Aids.
According to UNAids, India has some 5.7 million people infected with HIV, the world's highest number. Activists maintain that gay sex is only marginally responsible for spreading the disease.
Dr Ramadoss, however, is up against entrenched conservative mindsets espoused by the federal home ministry and a rash of senior politicians for whom gay sex is the product of "a perverse mind".
Former parliamentarian BP Singhal, from the country's main opposition Hindu nationalist Bharatiya Janata party, believes homosexuality an "evil exported from the West".
"If the court allows such acts then it would lead to male prostitution and the epidemic of Aids would further spread," said Mr Singhal's lawyer.
"The language of the law against homosexuality framed by Lord Macaulay in the 1830s is faulty as it [groups] the consensual with the coercive," a gay activist lawyer said, declining to be named. No legislation, he said, exists in India against male rape or
abuse of boys. Gay support groups want comprehensive sexual assault laws to protect them against harassment, he said.
To lobby their cause, hundreds of gays from both sexes recently marched for the first time in Delhi and Bangalore, southern India, in one of the largest displays of gay pride. Men wore sparkling saris, women sported rainbow boas and hundreds of people chanted for gay rights on their short walk through Delhi's centre, carrying banners and placards with slogans demanding recognition and rights.
But fear of ostracism was evident among many marchers who preferred to wear masks to conceal their identity.
"This is a national coming-out party," lawyer Alok Gupta said. "It's a simple thing: we are seeking the right to love."