The Congress-led UPA government may keep its views close to its chest on the legality of the rights of homosexuals to live as couples.
The Supreme Court will on Monday hear a batch of petitions putting a question mark on a Delhi high court ruling two years ago saying two adults of the same sex can have consensual sex.
The high court said it wouldn’t consider such intercourse an offence under section 377 of the Indian Penal Code, a provision that deals with unnatural sex.
A bench of Justice GS Singhvi and Justice AK Ganguly will hear pleas by certain political, social and religious organisations who are opposed to the high court judgment.
The high court had said that “moral indignation, howsoever strong, is not a valid basis for overriding individuals’ fundamental rights of dignity and privacy. In our scheme of things constitutional morality must outweigh the argument of public morality, even if it be the majoritarian view”.
Two Christian church coalitions, three Muslim NGOs, two Hindu astrologers, a disciple of yoga guru Baba Ramdev, an NGO run by a former Delhi police officer, and an environmentalist are up in arms against the high court verdict. The government has maintained silence.
A top lawyer and a law ministry source have tried to simplify the secular government’s dilemma on the judgment, which has been lauded by a ‘liberal’ section of society.
“We are conscious of the implications of this case. The key issue involved in the case is larger. The high court didn’t say anything new. If two adults have the consent to sex, law can’t intervene. When there’s no consent, having sex with a woman becomes rape,” the lawyer explained.
But, in case the apex court enters into the larger area of the right to marriage, then the government would have a case of serious concern.
Various laws relating to marriage, succession, adoption and maintenance could take a beating because there has been an emphasis on the paramount importance for women or children in these enactments.
In the recent past, a court in Sydney, Australia, put its stamp on a homosexual couple’s claim to adopt a child that was born of a hired womb of a woman in India.
