What next for gaydom?

While gays and lesbians heave a sigh of relief  over the Delhi high court’s judgement that gay sex is not a criminal act, this is but one small step towards gay rights compared to the giant leaps being made elsewhere. In the US, more and more  Indian gay and lesbian couples are coming  out in the open to push for action on equality in everything from marriage to immigration.

A sea of women lined Fifth Avenue near Manhattan’s Bryant Park last weekend for the annual protest march for lesbian civil rights.

There were no floats, no marching bands, just chanting, a few women on Harleys whooping it up, and an infectious joie de vivre. Of course, everyone knew they were there to march in solidarity with all lesbians: those who are out and those who cannot be.   

Despite the melee, Radha Patel was almost Zen-like. She knew I was a pesky journalist looking for a story, but she opened up anyway. She was a mind reader because she answered before I could frame a polite way of asking very personal questions. 

“It took seven years for my parents to be okay with my being gay,” said Patel.

“They have come a long way. They grew up in these small villages in India and it wasn’t even in their vocabulary. Their eyes are more open now to the fact that we are everywhere,” added Patel, a former United Nations environmental policy consultant.
Like many Gujaratis who run their lodging businesses in the US, Patel’s parents own a franchisee hotel in San Francisco. After she “cleared the air” with her conservative Indian parents, they surprised her.     

“They have even approached me and said let’s go find you a nice girl in India. We grew up with arranged marriage and it is strange how they have transferred their acceptance,” Patel, 35, said with a quick smile before she was swallowed up by a rambunctious tide of 15,000 women marching down Fifth Avenue.

The need for marriage 
Gay advocates are much more optimistic with the Obama administration in Washington after eight years of conservative Republican government. In the past month, Obama signed a measure extending benefits to same-sex partners of federal government workers. Now gays are pressing him to repeal the military’s “Don’t Ask, Don’t Tell” policy, under which gay Americans are allowed to serve, but only if they don’t publicly disclose their sexuality.

Energised by gay-friendly gestures from Washington, many gay New Yorkers are more hopeful than ever that a gay marriage bill pending in the New York legislature will pass muster. This would make New York the seventh US state to legalise same-sex marriage. Indian origin Rohan Sooklall, a steering committee member of the South Asian Lesbian and Gay Association (SALGA), says he and his American partner have registered their domestic partnership, but would get married in a heartbeat if New York allows gay marriages.
Currently, civil unions allow gay people rights such as visiting their partners in hospital, but fall short of the rights enjoyed by heterosexual married couples.  

Fighting for gay rights
In true New York spirit, the local gay and lesbian community is raising thousands of dollars to lobby lawmakers, plan rallies and run commercials supporting gay marriages. High-profile lawyer Vivian Polak, a partner at Dewey & LeBouf, who in her spare time wrote an important legal brief for the landmark Iowa case that legalised same-sex marriages this past April, has been busy lobbying efforts for action on the New York marriage bill.

“Canada and many EU countries are more advanced than the US in terms of gay rights. It’s my hope that the US can look to those jurisdictions as examples of tolerance and of the fact that society doesn’t fall apart when people are given their basic rights — on the contrary, society is strengthened when everyone has basic rights and opportunities,” Polak told DNA.

“I’m disappointed about what’s happened in California (which voted against gay marriage), but I remain quite optimistic about the possibilities in New York,” said Polak who has been with her partner for 11 years and believes that by their 12th anniversary they will be married in New York. Close on the heels of the Iowa decision to allow gay marriages, the New York state assembly passed a same-sex marriage bill in May. If it is passed in the Senate, Governor David Paterson has said he will sign it into law.

Positive media portrayals
“Visibility is crucial. If you are not represented in books, on television, in the theatre or other forms of media, then it’s almost like you don’t exist. Just as a baseline, we need to see representations of ourselves, and our lives in all its complexities out there on celluloid and in our culture,” British Indian film-maker Pratibha Parmar told DNA.

Back in 1991, Parmar’s documentary Khush trained its lens on South Asian queers. More recently, Parmar’s sparkling lesbian romantic comedy Nina’s Heavenly Delights shows Scottish-Asian Nina Shah juggling the expectations of her family with her sexuality. “Quite a few South Asians have told me that my film emboldened them to come out to their parents as there is such a positive portrayal of the mother,” said Parmar.

“Nina’s emotional journey draws heavily from my own; particularly the pull between personal desire and family duty. Nina assumed somehow that her mother will never accept her being a lesbian but her mother surprises her. Yes, my mother surprised me,” said the film-maker who’s been with her Pakistani partner Shaheen for over 15 years. “My family accepts her as part of my life now. I think it was just a question of time.”

Immigration rights
For Indian gay and lesbian couples, immigration is a vital area in the push for gay rights. Presently, they face difficulties in making career moves because of limitations regarding the visas they can obtain for their partners. SALGA points out there is a disgraceful prejudice in denying people immigration equality on the basis of sexual orientation.

“We are hoping that legalising gay marriages will allow same-sex couples to file for visas like straight couples,” said Sooklall.
He added that SALGA receives pleas for help from its own members and from gays and lesbians living in South Asia. “I know two cases where people did get asylum,” said Sooklall.

 Britain, Canada, South Africa and most west European countries have immigration policies that recognise same sex couples, but there has been no change to American immigration laws for gay couples. US law does not allow American citizens to sponsor green cards for their partners. If they fall in love with foreigners who don’t have permanent residency, they often have to avoid separations by leaving the US to live in a more gay-friendly country. 

“Instead of heartbreak, we are planning to move to Canada when my work visa expires,” said a gay Indian techie who has been in a relationship with an American for six years.