The Supreme Court of India yesterday paved the way for deleting the Section 377 in the constitution, which prevents the legalization of gay sex. It is a step in the wrong direction. Here is why.
We live in a country which possesses a past which is filled with grandeur like no other country in the world. It has its own values and principles. When we meet we greet each other by joining our own hands and saying "Namaste", instead of shaking hands with each other (which can actually help the spread of contagious diseases and also AIDS, according to a survey). We believe in restraint and practice it too. We do not live in Europe or USA, wherein there is unlimited freedom for any individual to do any thing with his body and even behave in any randomn fashion unless he forces something on somebody. Unlimited freedom is only for animals, who do not have an organised society. We are not animals, we are human beings - a species that has evolved far better than dogs, cats, monkeys etc. In short, we have a social structure in which there are certain predetermined (do)s and (don't)s. The ones who try to violate this social structure are put behind bars, like any one trying to attack the chastity of a woman is convicted because he just can not do that in a human society.
Here some may argue - "being a homosexual is not a crime, a person can do any thing with his body and can have any relationship with anybody he wants. He is not forcing anyone to do what he wants. He is not transgressing his social limits." I totally disagree with this ridiculous argument. Even though he is not forcing anybody to do anything, in reality he is definitely transgressing his social limits because social limits are defined by a set of rules and those rules do not permit him/her to cultivate a weird relationship with a person of his own gender. Now since he is breaking those set of rules, which every decent human society possesses around the globe, he becomes a criminal obviously. He needs to be punished for what he is trying to do or is already doing.
Secondly and more essentially, we indians, can not compare ourselves with westerners in this regard. Their values and life styles have remained different from ours since thousands of years. For them divorcing a spouse is very common, for us not. There, if an adolescent girl is not already dating a boy, her dad asks her to go for a date. Compare that with our dads. If he finds that his young daughter is dating somebody, he will not only feel uncomfortable but also reprimand her severely against that. In short, we can not just keep comparing ourselves to western society, just with a baseless expectation of getting upgraded. This actually would not be upgrading but actually downgrading. We might be behind western society in terms of technology, life-styles etc. but as far as our genuine inherent cultural values are concerned, we are far ahead of them. Instead why not upgrade ourselves in other positive things which they have - total cleanliness, no big traffic, etc.
Thirdly, by giving legal status to homosexuality we can not say that we have modernized our country. No way. Modernity does not mean that we push aside our very own culture which is considered to be an ideal culture around the intellectual world (which comprises mainly people from countries like Germany, Japan, US, UK and France). None of the 4 Vedas and 6 Shastras recommend homosexuality. In the Mahabharata, there was this one character called Shikhandi. He was gay. He knew right from his birth instinctively that he was born to be a reason behind the death of Bhishma Pitamaha. He was able to do that. Because of him, Bhishma died. But, as regards his presence, neither did any one like him nor approved of his weird sexual orientation. The myth that Lord Ayappa, worshiped in southern india, was born due to the union of Lord Mahesh (Shiva) and Lord Krishna, is just symbolic and not practical. In short, none of our hindu scriptures had ever legalized gay sex, any where in the past. So if gay sex had no social approval in the culture which we have inherited, then there is no need absolutely, to change it now.
Here I am not advocating the belief that eunochs (hijde) should be treated in a demeaning manner. No. They are born like that (with both sexual genitals). Nature has done that. So we can not go against what mother Nature has done. They should get an equally respectable status as that of people with normal genders. What I am saying here, is that if those who are born normal, start behaving abnormally and initiate abnormal sexual preferences, then that should be completely ruled out, handled strictly and punished.
Just imagine, what would happen if this is allowed. Once it perpetrates and penetrates deeper into the indian society, the day is not far when we would witness, every thing going on very similar to european countries, on indian streets. Gay couples would be found kissing weirdly at a street corner or say near a statue of Mahatma Gandhi. Imagine a man kissing on the lips of another man near the statue of the Father of the nation. What a shameful sight for us? Would he have recommended a yes for gay sex? Of course No. Then we may find a boy arguing with his dad and mom that he is "in love" with another boy and wants to marry him (once we allow gay sex, the next regressive step would be allowing gay sex marriage, which we will have to do anyhow, even if do not want to). Slowly there would be so many gay couples in all our cities. Call any body of those couples at their home and a masculine unattractive voice of a man would be heard on the opposite end, picking up the phone at 11 am - "I am Mrs. Malhotra speaking... mere husband office gaye hai...!!" On the day of Kadva Chauth a strong man, who is basically a wife, would look through the dish towards the moon and ask for a long life for her (or his!!) husband, who is also another strong man!!! On garden benches during sunday evenings, you would witness a man sitting close to another man, in some semi-dark shade, both fidgeting with each other's bodies or kissing each other. What an extremely sorrowful sight that would be! You may find more and more number of men dressed like a woman on the streets of our cities and villages, wearing either a saree or a kurta payjama or any other ladies outfit and also having applied lipstick and makeup on her (his!) masculine face. The number of such cross-dressers will increase at public places undoubtedly, once the law begins to allow them to behave in whatever weird way that they want to, exhibiting themselves in any foolish manner in public. They will easily occupy seats in the unreserved comparments of our overcrowded trains and also local transport buses, pushing away normal couples as both of them are men, so their combined physical strength would be larger than a normal couple. Even couples with both females as spouses, would prove to be equally annoying for others.
In short, gay couples across the board, will continue to embarrass normal citizens, every where in India, with their shameless, basically weird instincts and outrageous behaviors once they get approval from the Law of the land. No body would be able to stand in the way of their extremely shameful and arrogant semi-nude presence in public life. Day after day, normal people will have to remain prepared for tolerating any kind of embarrassment that they would inflict upon them.The Supreme Court should in fact, re-think on what it did yesterday. Section 377 should remain and gay sex should never be legalized in our country. -(kb/9-1-2018)
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