The most remarkable part of the Indian court’s decision is that it didn’t just use a universal standard of human rights to decriminalize homosexuality; it also acknowledged the responsibility of the state to help end the stigma attached to being LGBT. The court could have gone even further and emphasized that the Indian government should put in place mechanisms that would allow the reconciliation of shunned LGBT children and their parents. Doing so would help end the practice of parents forcing arranged marriages on those children—something that can lead to trauma and other mental health problems. It would also help end the shocking practice of “corrective rape,” in which families subject their LGBT children to nonconsensual sex.[...]
India also needs to help reconcile LGBT Indians with their various religious communities; following the court’s decision, many conservative Christian, Muslim, and Hindu leaders, who are often at loggerheads, blasted the ruling as shameful and promised to contest it. Such a reconciliation would right a historic wrong. It was not local religious leaders but British colonialists who introduced these barbaric laws to India. Hinduism, which is the dominant religion in India, was quite accepting of LGBT people before the British introduced Section 377 of the Indian Penal Code in the 1860s, imposing harsh penalties on whoever has “carnal intercourse against the order of nature.” That provision was then extended from India out across the British Empire. It is the reason why most former British colonies are still, to this day, not only hostile to same-sex love but also actively opposed to it.
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