Source : bbc.com
By : isamupipe

India’s Supreme Court has ruled that gay people have a right to live in private, putting the future of the country’s anti-gay law in doubt. Homosexuality is illegal in India under Section 377 of the penal code, which is based on outdated British colonial law. The century-old law was brought back into effect by a court ruling in 2013, outlawing “carnal intercourse against the order of nature”.

However, a separate ruling this week from the country’s Supreme Court has affirmed that gay people should be afforded basic rights. The ruling, which was on an unrelated privacy case, appeared to affirm that LGBT people deserve basic right to live, ahead of a wider challenge to Section 377.
The nine-judge court affirmed: “Sexual orientation is an essential attribute of privacy. “Discrimination against an individual on the basis of sexual orientation is deeply offensive to the dignity and self-worth of the individual.” Equality demands that the sexual orientation of each individual in society must be protected on an even platform.

The decision also challenged the ruling that reinstated Section 377, which had initially said that the law was not discriminatory because it only impacted a “minuscule fraction of the country’s population”. The Supreme Court ruled this week: “That ‘a miniscule fraction of the country’s population constitutes lesbians, gays, bisexuals or transgenders’ is not a sustainable basis to deny the right to privacy.