THIRUVANANTHAPURAM: In decriminalising homosexuality, the Supreme Court on Thursday stood up for equality of treatment of all Indian citizens, Shashi Tharoor MP said on Thursday. Twice unsuccessful in the past in even introducing a private members’ bill on the issue in Parliament after being shouted down by BJP members, Tharoor said his conviction then that the judiciary was the lone hope left for the issue now stands vindicated.
The verdict also “shames the BJP members who behaved in such a disgraceful, bigoted and unpleasant when this issue was sought to be brought in a humane way before our Parliament,” he said.“To my mind, the government has no place in the bedroom, and the government has no place in the private lives of individuals.
Criminal acts, compulsion, child molestation — those are still illegal and will always be illegal. But private acts between consenting adults is something which no governments should have criminalised as we have done since the days of the British Raj,” he said.
Over the years, we have allowed the government to interfere in the private lives of the citizens, to discriminate against people based on their sexual orientation, and to infringe on the rights and freedoms that our Constitution has long upheld.
“The Supreme Court stood up for equality of treatment of all our citizens. It has stood up for the dignity of the citizens irrespective of the personal preferences and it stood up, ultimately, for the value of privacy which itself is a right that the Supreme Court upheld last year. To my mind, equality, privacy, dignity are the key issues here. And I deplore those who are trying to reduce it to a sniggering debate about sex,” he said.