Yes, fundamental right gives us right to do anything with our body. Its my body and I can do anything.
There's more to it ...
“Discrimination is antithesis of equality,” Delhi High Court judges wrote in a 105-page decision that is the first in India to directly guarantee rights for gays and lesbians. “It is the recognition of equality which will foster dignity of every individual,” the decision said.
In their decision, Chief Justice A. .P Shah and Justice S. Muralidhar declared Section 377, as it pertains to consensual sex among people above the age of 18, in violation of key parts of India’s Constitution.
The law violates
- Article 14, which guarantees all people “equality before the law;”
- Article 15, which prohibits discrimination “on grounds of religion, race, caste, sex or place of birth;” and
- Article 21, which guarantees “protection of life and personal liberty” they said.
The ruling applies only to India’s capital city but it will force the national government to either appeal the decision to the Supreme Court or repeal the law nationwide, lawyers said.
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The bottomline of this ruling is that it makes the govt. effort to tackle AIDS much easier now.
the National AIDS Control Agency argued in late July that Section 377 poses a public health risk by driving gay men underground and impeding efforts to prevent the spread of AIDS. Section 377 is rarely now used to prosecute gay adults engaged in consensual sex, lawyers and activists say, but it remains a whip with which to threaten, blackmail and jail suspected gay men and lesbians where they gather — in parks, bars and even, on occasion, on the Internet. Strictly speaking, the statute makes it illegal to distribute condoms to gay men or in Indian prisons.
The campaign to repeal Section 377 reflects a confluence of broad changes sweeping this country, from health concerns and urbanization in India to a growing awareness about India’s place in the world. A preface to the open letter, written by Amartya Sen, the Nobel laureate and economist who is now a professor at Harvard, calls the law, codified in 1861, “a colonial-era monstrosity.”
“That, as it happens, was the year in which the American Civil War began, which would ultimately abolish the unfreedom of slavery in America,” he wrote. “Today, 145 years later, we surely have urgent reason to abolish in India, with our commitment to democracy and human rights, the unfreedom of arbitrary and unjust criminalization.”
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