Seminar on Adoption Rights of Gays and Homosexuals
The HRC in association with an umbrella group of NGOs from Maharashtra conducted a seminar on the adoption rights of gays and homosexuals, with a view to address an issue plaguing Indian society over the ages. The status, legal, social, and political, of homosexuals has been a grey area for Indian society for quite a while now. In ancient and medieval times and up to recent past (1800s’) the status of a homosexual was an issue not addressed openly in social and intellectual circles. This also led the British, who were our imperialistic rulers at that time, to formulate archaic and derogatory laws ostracizing the legal and social status of a homosexual. They imposed on us laws such as Section 377 of the Indian Penal Code which accorded the private and personal conduct of homosexuals in India a penal offence.
The seminar was an effort to address these and various other issues that have plagued the gays and homosexuals in India and around the world with a special emphasis on their adoption rights within the framework of laws prevalent in India with suggestions for reform. The seminar saw discussions being held by various lawyers and gay rights activists who endeavored to resolve the issue of gay rights within the legal boundaries accorded to them by the ancient laws still in practice in India. The emphasis was to try and provide gays a legally accurate yet socially accepted right to adopt children and to try and find them a place in the mainstream.
The seminar was started off by a panel discussion by Prof. Deshpande, Reader, Sociology Department, Bombay University who tried to analyze the sociological importance and status of gays and homosexuals in India. He was able provide reasons why the majority of the heterosexual population across India and elsewhere were unwilling to accept homosexuals as a normal, integral part of human society having no difference in rights except the simple issue of sexual preference. He emphasized that homosexuality was a natural and scientifically accepted norm of sexual behavior and essentially a person’s sexual preference was a private matter. The fact that one is a homosexual is merely a private matter which cannot be the basis of disqualifying him or her from basic and essentially public rights.
Justice Ranjana Desai, Judge Bombay High Court, led a discussion on the adoption rights of gays and homosexuals and the reform needed in the Indian Judicial System to incorporate the status of gays as equal members of society. She also emphasized the need to abolish Section 377 of the Indian Penal Code, 1860 which defines and categorizes unnatural sex, hence including in its ambit the sexual orientation of gays and homosexuals. She emphasized the fact that homosexuality was an accepted norm of natural behavior and hence the provisions of Section 377 were rendered ineffective. Justice Desai also emphasized that the option of adoption can be made available to gays only when they are accorded equal legal status in the eyes of law and thereon required reform in the entire legal basis of interpretation of the status of gays and homosexuals.
The seminar also incorporated the study of various foreign models of adoption rights accorded to gays and homosexuals so as to gauge an understanding of the how such as system would work in India and to discover what the basic and special rights that have been specifically accorded to gays and homosexuals. The adoption models of countries like Sweden, USA, Canada, New Zealand and India were studied so as to examine the possibilities and avenues that may be made available to the gays in India.
In all, the seminar tried to understand the sociological implications of a person being homosexual, tried to work out a feasible legal model to allow homosexuals to adopt and to try and fight against discrimination and against the denial of basic rights which is meted out to them everyday in the course of living in a society that is highly closeted.