BENGALURU: A five-judge bench of the Supreme Court on Tuesday pronounced a historic order that says that same-sex marriage cannot be legalised. Interestingly, in this case, Bengalurean Som Thomas intervened and presented his arguments in a 40-page application. He had also made oral submissions before the bench.
Asked about his role in this issue, he said it began during his corporate career when several MNCs in Bengaluru had begun emphasising diversity as a corporate theme. “It meant including more women at work, more people with disabilities, and then they insisted that LGBTQ people should also find the workplace inclusive. Initially, it seemed like the right thing to do and was very educative. However, with time it took on the flavour of making homosexuality look cool,” Som said. He raised his concerns with the management, who, however, insisted on a push for ‘pride’ events around the year.
He said he saw propaganda in the corporate effort. “This went back to 1971, when a man called Frank Kameny said that ‘Gay is Good’. At that time, the American Psychiatric Association had listed homosexuality as a disease. Kameny felt homosexuals were ill-treated because of this classification, so in the APA annual meetings in 1971 and 1972, he campaigned very hard to have homosexuality removed from the DSM. It was eventually done, though it was not a scientific decision but propaganda, which is the method the LGBTQ movement has used since then.
On the salient points of his intervention, he said back in 2018, the IPC Section 377 judgment pivoted on the fact that the bench thought homosexuality is natural. Som emphasised that homosexuality, especially penile-anal penetration, has its own medical consequences -- not just HIV, but proctitis and other diseases. Som Thomas quotes a doctor as saying that a doctor who fails to inform his patient against receiving penile anal penetration, is failing in his duty, like a doctor who fails to inform that smoking is injurious to health. He also emphasised that Indian law on marriage talks about consummation and impotence, which refer to a very specific type of sexual intercourse.
The government’s interest is in family structures that can sustain life: the birth of children as well as the best conditions for their upbringing. The Solicitor General of India brought out how complex marriage law is. For example, the Hindu Succession Act defines different blood relations as ‘full blood’, ‘half-blood’ and ‘uterine blood’. If a child is born to a gay man who has donated sperm to a surrogate mother, or if a child is born to a lesbian woman who has received sperm donated by a stranger, how can these laws be applied? The Solicitor General brought out very clearly, that around 160 sections across multiple laws have to be changed to make the entire marriage definition gender-neutral, if at all it is possible.
On how he sees this going ahead, Thomas said in future, LGBTQ activists will try to use the word ‘union’ to bring in same-sex marriage by some means. The real concern is about children. It is often stated in these cases, and also by Justice Chandrachud, that children of same-sex marriages develop as well as children of heterosexual marriages, but this is not an accurate professional statement.
The American Psychological Association says children of lesbian women are similar to children of heterosexual parents, but it does not have data for children of gay men to support such a claim. So a generalised statement that any same-sex parents can bring up children effectively is incorrect.