New Delhi: Minutes after the Supreme Court ruled that gay sex among consenting adults is not an offence, Senior Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) leader Subramanian Swamy expressed his disappointment with the verdict on Thrusday.
Swami said the verdict is not final and can still be challenged. “There is no finality in the Supreme Court's judgment today. This judgment can be overturned by a seven-judge bench,” Swamy told CNN-News18. He added that the verdict, decriminalising consensual homosexual intercourse, would give rise to what he alluded to as social evils. He even claimed that this would lead to a rise in sexually transmitted diseases. A defiant Swamy continued to refer to homosexuality as a “genetic disorder”.
This verdict could give rise to other issues such as increase in the number of HIV cases, gay bars, etc. It cannot be treated like an alternate sexual behaviour," Swamy said.
The Supreme Court has decriminalised consensual sex between homosexuals and read down Section 377 of the IPC. “The ideals of individual autonomy must be preserved. We have to bid adieu to stereotypes and prejudices. Constitutional morality must guide us all,” Chief Justice of India Dipak Misra said.
The SC said momentous walk of freedom can be realised when each one of us acknowledges LGBT community possesses the same rights. “We have to bid adieu to stereotypes and prejudices,” said the apex court, adding that intimacy and privacy was a matter of choice while “prejudice and social stigma still affects a certain section of society.”
A five-judge constitution bench headed by Chief Justice Dipak Misra were hearing a clutch of petitions against the section that criminalises gay sex.
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