<$BlogRSDURL$>
My tweets

    Site Feed - Site Feed

    My other writings
    Cricket 24 x 7
    Jaagruthi
    Yahoo! 360
    Mayajaal
    My Bloglines
    My 43 things
    My LinkedIn
    My Facebook Profile On Orkut

    Mail me
    About me
    FlickrFlickr Feed

    Yahoo! Search



    Baakiyon ke blog
    Badri's Tamil thoughts
    Ganesh's Happily Haphazard
    Nitin's Acorn
    Prabhu's Pethals
    Raghu the reluctant Delhiite
    Samanth's blahg
    Sankhya the busy idler
    Srini the movie critic

    Creative Commons License
    Rabble Rousing Random Ramblings by S Jagadish is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-Noncommercial-No Derivative Works 3.0 Unported License.

    July 03, 2009
     

    Too early to cheer for 'queer'?

    Yesterday, in a judgment that undoubtedly was significant, the Delhi High Court de-criminalized consensual sexual acts of adults in private

    We declare that Section 377 IPC, insofar it criminalises
    consensual sexual acts of adults in private, is violative of Articles 21, 14 and 15 of the Constitution.
    The provisions of Section 377 IPC will continue to govern non-consensual penile non-vaginal sex and penile non-vaginal sex involving minors.
    There are two implications from this ruling:
    1. Homosexual acts between consenting adults are no longer criminal acts and the parties involved cannot be booked under Section 377 of the Indian Penal Code.
    2. Non-vaginal sex (oral, anal, masturbation, etc.) is also not criminal as long as it is between consenting adults.
    However, these are early days. For starters, the judgment was passed by the Delhi High Court, whose jurisdiction is probably restricted to Delhi, or at most the NCR area. However, since this is a situation where the constitutional validity of a specific section in the Indian Penal Code was struck down, the implications should be applicable to all parts of India provided that no other court in India has a contrary view. However, there's nothing that currently stops other High Courts from a contrary view, assuming that petitions against Sec 377 are in existence in other courts.

    The decision could still be appealed in the Supreme Court. The government could in all likelihood not appeal against the decision. However, when morons and mobs belonging to various 'religious' and 'cultural' groups/political parties decide to take matters into their own hands as part of protesting in the name of "Indian culture and values", and if the judiciary asks the government what it's going to do to stop the violence, the government could easily point out that this was all because of the court's decision taken without factoring in the implications.

    Further, all that the judgment does is to de-criminalize private homosexual activity between consenting adults. Does that necessarily make it legal? For e.g., "Not guilty" doesn't mean "innocent".

    The last word on this is probably a few years away. Was it Lao-Tzu or Confucious who said "A journey of a thousand miles begins with a single step"?

    Labels: , , , , ,



    Some of the sites linked in my rants may require registration/subscription. Links within my ramblings open in a new window.
    Some of the links may now be broken/not take you to the expected report since the original content providers may have archived/removed the contents.
    All opinions expressed are mine alone. My employers (past, present or future) are in no way connected to the opinions expressed here.
    All pictures, photographs used are copyrights of the original owners. I do not intend to infringe on any copyright.
    Pictures and photographs are used here to merely accentuate and enhance the content value to the readers.


    Previous Posts
    Why call it queer?

    Farce and symbolism

    "Please sir, I want some more"

    The 2009 Indian election

    And then there were none

    Karunanidhi's amazing defense of the LTTE and Prab...

    Tamil New Year's Day

    A defence lawyer for Mohd. Ajmal Amir Iman

    Why Varun Gandhi presents a wonderful opportunity

    Not with my money!

    This page is powered by Blogger.