LGBTI community rallies in Delhi, calls for repeal of anti-gay law | Gay Star News

Dozens of activists and members of Delhi’s LGBTI community held a protest in New Delhi today calling for the repeal of Section 377 of the Indian Penal Code which outlaws sexual relations between men, equal treatment and an end to the ‘homophobic’ policies of the central government.

The rally comes just days after Subramanian Swamy, a leader of the Hindu-nationalist Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP), called homosexuality a ‘genetic disorder.’ He said that while gay men and lesbians should not be discriminated against for jobs or socially ostracized, ‘we cannot celebrate nor can we publicize it.’

On Tuesday, he tweeted a reply to a user saying, ‘The issue is not about respect. We respect physically challenged persons. Homos are genetically handicapped.’

Following the SCOTUS ruling, Union Law Minister Sadananda Gowda reportedly hinted – then later denied – that the government is considering scrapping the anti-gay law.

Activists at the protest say India should catch up and treat its LGBTI citizens as it would other citizens.


LGBTI community rallies in Delhi, calls for repeal of anti-gay law | Gay Star News

The British colonial origins of anti-gay laws - The Washington Post

Although the attached article is a bit dated (Oct 2014), it offers an interesting perspective and an added layer to the "Exportation of Hate" chronicle: "a common narrative is that acceptance and tolerance of homosexuality is a foreign, or alien, Western imposition on indigenous cultures."  As Han and O'Mahoney point out,

The idea that the so-called tolerance towards homosexuality somehow sprang from a western source doesn’t hold.  As our research shows, this narrative is not only wrong-headed but the opposite of the historical facts.  Instead, for many countries, including some of those mentioned above, criminalization laws were based on British imperial legal instruments, like the Indian Penal Code Section 377A, introduced and imposed on these countries by Britain when they were colonized.

This "it's foreign" plot-line does not necessarily hold true "we found that former British colonies are much more likely to have laws that criminalize homosexual conduct than former colonies of other European powers, or than other states in general."  And at quick glance one could say that individuals such as Scott Lively, Brian Brown, and Mike Bickle are taking advantage of that understanding of history.

It seems that when the British Empire was introducing legal systems around the world, one of the laws they included was the law against sodomy, which was not decriminalized in England and Wales until 1967. By this time, most of the “Winds of Change” wave of decolonization had left former colonies independent of changes in British legislation.  By contrast, after the French Revolution, the French Empire decriminalized sodomy between consenting adults, and spread this Enlightenment legacy among its colonies.  So, as the figure below illustrates, former French colonies were much quicker to decriminalize.
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Highlighting the colonial origin of anti-gay legislation is an important way to counter the narrative that tolerance of homosexuality is a neo-colonial imposition.  The Economist simultaneously downplays the importance of the colonial legacy and claims that Western criticism of the new anti-gay laws allows post-colonial governments to paint themselves as forging an independent path.  This confused message misses the potential power of undercutting the false narrative that tolerance of homosexuality is equivalent to colonialism.  Another strategy is to publicize the numerous examples of accepted homosexual practices and relations in various pre-colonial African cultures.

The British colonial origins of anti-gay laws - The Washington Post

Gays Adopt Kids 'To Train Them On Gay Practices' Says Uganda Lawmaker Pushing Anti-Gay Bill - The New Civil Rights Movement

In November of 2012, Rebecca Kadaga, the first woman Speaker of the Ugandan Parliament, promised she would pass the "Kill the Gays" bill as a "Christmas gift" for her nation's Christians. Even though the legislation had been debated since 2009, it took her another year to keep her promise, and she could only do it be illegally forcing the bill to a vote without a quorum. Her action was in fact illegal – even the President of Uganda suggested it was criminal – and the Ugandan Supreme Court struck it down.

Speaker Kadaga is back promising her people a similar "Christmas gift" again, and she's still not above dirty tricks to accomplish her mission.

Think Progress notes the new anti-gay legislation "appears to be far more repressive than the infamous Anti-Homosexuality Act, which imposed life sentences on people convicted of homosexuality." It would "outlaw 'funding for purposes of promoting unnatural sexual practices' and 'exhibiting unnatural sexual practices.' Anyone convicted of the crime could serve up to seven years in prison."

But as in Russia, the "promoting" part is the key.

Gays Adopt Kids 'To Train Them On Gay Practices' Says Uganda Lawmaker Pushing Anti-Gay Bill - The New Civil Rights Movement