India Supreme Court begins to consider marriage equality

The Indian Supreme Court on Tuesday began to hear arguments on whether to extend marriage rights to same-sex couples.

The Supreme Court in 2018 struck down the country’s colonial-era law that criminalized consensual same-sex sexual relations.

Ankush Kumar, a Washington Blade contributor in India, reported Mukul Rohatgi, an LGBTQ and intersex activist, said the “LGBTQ community possess (the) same human rights as (a) heterosexual person.”

“So they have right to marry and can not be left alone,” said Rohatgi. “So we request this court to grant us relief.”

The Blade previously reported the government opposes legal recognition of same-sex marriage and has told the highest court that same-sex couples living together as partners and having a sexual relationship with the same sex individual is not comparable with Indian family unit — a husband, a wife and a child born out of the union. The government also told the Supreme Court that samesex marriage is not compatible with the Indian ethos and morality.

Kumar reported the Supreme Court said the “notion of a biological man or woman is not absolute.”

MICHAEL K. LAVERS