HYDERABAD: Though the Supreme Court decriminalised same sex intercourse, members of the community highlight that there is still a long way to go as the change must come from the society and governments in terms of multiple policies and plans.
“The first thing we need is a strong anti-discriminatory law that provides complete protection at workplace,” said Balachandran Ramiah, LGBTQI activist from popular gay group called Gay Bombay and a petitioner at Supreme Court. He stressed on the need to sensitise the various state machineries like police, employers etc on its importance.
One of the petitioners at SC had shared the story of how he could not pursue his career in IAS out of fear of losing his job if someone found out about his sexual orientation. Another aspect the community is now looking forward to is more clarity on whether same sex marriages would be allowed. The SC, in it’s judgement, maintained that “The question of freedom of choosing a partner is reflected from the catena of recent judgments,” quoting the case of Hadiya and Shafin Jahan.
Highlighting another aspect, Akhilesh, a petitioner from IIT Chennai, said the community should now voice the discrimination they faced as they have a judgement to back them up and live with dignity. “When we applied as a collective from IIT, we wanted communities to come together from IIM’s and medical field as well because unless you have a person saying ‘hey I have faced this issue’, you don’t have a face to a thing. So, case by case we should tackle each discrimination faced and have policies in place,” said Akhilesh.