JUSTICE TOWARDS LGBT: CREATING SPACE FOR LOVE
Downloads
Abstract
On 2nd July 2009, the Delhi High Court in Naz Foundation V. NCT, Delhi & Ors., handed down the verdict reading down section 377 of the Indian Penal Code (IPC), 1860, decriminalizing consensual sex between adults. The judgement was more than just a legal verdict as it marked the beginning of the process by which queer people, from being targeted anti-citizens, became subject of rights. It recognized that sexuality was integrally linked to identity and that ‘for every individual, whether homosexual or not, the sense of gender and sexual orientation of the person are so embedded in the individual that the individual carries this aspect of his or her identity wherever he or she goes’. The court concluded that ‘the expression of sexuality requires a partner, real or imagined. It is not for the state to choose or to arrange the choice of partner, but for the partners to choose themselves.’ The cultural and religious puritans have rallied with shrill hostility against the judgement calling queer people diseased, unnatural, against Indian culture and reprehensible.
However in the subsequent judgement by the supreme court of India in the case of Suresh Kumar Koushal and Anr. V. Naz Foundation and Ors. AIR2014SC563 the judgement was overruled stating that sec.377 does not suffer from the vice of unconstitutionality, clearly, this means that the apex court of the country thought it not to be unconstitutional to criminalise the expression of love. Rather than taking a firm positive stance the court thought it would be fit to wash their hands off of the whole mess and instead advised the legislative bodies to take the matter into discussion.
External References to this Article
Loading reference data...
License Terms
Ownership and Licensing:
Authors of research papers submitted to any journal published by The Law Brigade Publishers retain the copyright of their work while granting the journal specific rights. Authors maintain ownership of the copyright and grant the journal the right of first publication. Simultaneously, authors agree to license their research papers under the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 International (CC BY-SA 4.0) License.
License Permissions:
Under the CC BY-SA 4.0 License, others are permitted to share and adapt the work, even for commercial purposes, provided that appropriate attribution is given to the authors, and acknowledgment is made of the initial publication by The Law Brigade Publishers. This license encourages the broad dissemination and reuse of research papers while ensuring that the original work is properly credited.
Additional Distribution Arrangements:
Authors are free to enter into separate, non-exclusive contractual arrangements for distributing the published version of the work (e.g., posting it to institutional repositories or publishing it in books), provided that the original publication by The Law Brigade Publishers is acknowledged.
Online Posting:
Authors are encouraged to share their work online (e.g., in institutional repositories or on personal websites) both prior to submission and after publication. This practice can facilitate productive exchanges and increase the visibility and citation of the work.
Responsibility and Liability:
Authors are responsible for ensuring that their submitted research papers do not infringe on the copyright, privacy, or other rights of third parties. The Law Brigade Publishers disclaims any liability for any copyright infringement or violation of third-party rights within the submitted research papers.
Published
Issue
Section
License
This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-ShareAlike 4.0 International License.
Copyright © 2026 by Jatin Tripathi
The copyright and license terms mentioned on this page take precedence over any other license terms mentioned on the article full text PDF or any other material associated with the article.
