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India court legalises gay sex in landmark ruling

bbc.com

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Re: India court legalises gay sex in landmark ruling

#81

Post by majewsky »

krapp wrote: post #61
M_Bakhtiari wrote: post #43

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It's naive to think western liberal cultural change is a one-way street. This is the kind of thing that comes in waves. Just look at the radical transformation of the pre-colonial Kingdom of Buganda into present-day Uganda with its sodomy laws and internet meme pastors, perhaps ironically catalysed by the west, a west that has since flipped the complete opposite direction. It's only a matter of time before the tables…

The modern definition of "LGBT" is, for the most part, a cultural construct. Behavior we in the west would consider "homosexual" today, including the act of sex between persons of the same gender, was considered perfectly normal between "heterosexual" people in certain contexts and pre-Christian cultures. It wasn't that long ago that men kissing one another on the lips was a common practice of platonic affection. If…

> It wasn't that long ago that men kissing one another on the lips was a common practice of platonic affection.

This comes to mind: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/My_God,_Help_Me_to_Survive_Thi...

Re: India court legalises gay sex in landmark ruling

#82

Post by sgift »

voltooid wrote: post #12
thomasfedb wrote: post #2

The phrase "legalises gay sex" is surreal and otherworldly to me. We recent fought for marriage in Australia. Shocking to think they were and are still so backwards as to make that headline possible.

There is more history to this. The introduction of the law relating to making gay sex illegal "... dating back to 1861, (that was) introduced during the British rule of India (modelled on the Buggery Act of 1533) criminalised sexual activities "against the order of nature", including homosexual activities" https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Section_377_of_the_Indian_Pena... It is the truth for a lot of countries that were…

> Colonial powers left their mark behind in so many unfortunate ways that are just too complex for countries to deal with even today.

What does that even mean? They are free countries. No one forced India to hold onto that law. No one forces other countries to hold onto colonial era laws. If they don't change it that's their choice, their decision and their problem in the end. Not that of some long gone boogeyman.

Re: India court legalises gay sex in landmark ruling

#83

Post by M_Bakhtiari »

krapp wrote: post #61
M_Bakhtiari wrote: post #43

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It's naive to think western liberal cultural change is a one-way street. This is the kind of thing that comes in waves. Just look at the radical transformation of the pre-colonial Kingdom of Buganda into present-day Uganda with its sodomy laws and internet meme pastors, perhaps ironically catalysed by the west, a west that has since flipped the complete opposite direction. It's only a matter of time before the tables…

The modern definition of "LGBT" is, for the most part, a cultural construct. Behavior we in the west would consider "homosexual" today, including the act of sex between persons of the same gender, was considered perfectly normal between "heterosexual" people in certain contexts and pre-Christian cultures. It wasn't that long ago that men kissing one another on the lips was a common practice of platonic affection. If…

>acceptance of same-sex relationships has been the norm in many cultures

That's what was the case in Buganda. The Ugandan martyrs rebelled against that and were killed for it. Lauded by the west for their resistance at the time, with their spiritual successors demonised by the same west today.

Re: India court legalises gay sex in landmark ruling

#84

Post by vijaybritto »

robjan wrote: post #56
vijaybritto wrote: post #51

Irony is that a British news outlet is posting about it when they were the ones who introduced that law in India before 157 years!! Anyway, a great step in the right direction!

The people who made those laws are long dead

Yes. Not blaming any Brit now. Just pointing out

Re: India court legalises gay sex in landmark ruling

#85

Post by M_Bakhtiari »

sctb wrote: post #72
M_Bakhtiari wrote: post #19

I don't think this will last, not even in the west.

Many of your comments are shallow one-liners. Could we please ask you to improve? https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html

I don't want to be needlessly verbose, but I'll keep it in mind to go more in depth in the future.

Re: India court legalises gay sex in landmark ruling

#86

Post by simias »

etiennemarcel wrote: post #46
simias wrote: post #39

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I thought we had a similar law in France until the 1980's but apparently I was at least partly mistaken: >Although same-sex sexual activity was a capital crime that often resulted in the death penalty during the Ancien Régime, all sodomy laws were repealed in 1791 during the French Revolution. However, a lesser known indecent exposure law that often targeted homosexuals was introduced in 1960 before being repealed tw…

In 81 homosexuality was taken off the mental illnesses list, that's probably what you're thinking of.

Ah that's probably it, thank you.

Re: India court legalises gay sex in landmark ruling

#87

Post by coldtea »

wallace_f wrote: post #42
vinni2 wrote: post #35

As a gay Indian this is a great news! but it is one thing to decriminalize it legally and complete different thing for societal acceptance and leading a normal life as gay person in India. For an average gay person in India this doesn’t change much. There is still a long way to go. This law was never a problem for me but my family and relative and neighbors are. But it is a good progress.

The world is so weird. I never understood the motive behind tyrannizing other people. How is that winning at anything other than being an asshole? Why don't people just leave other people alone? Is it so much different to tyrannize a woman for being feminine, or just being attractive? Most of us are instinctively disgusted by that--or at least claim to be?

>The world is so weird. I never understood the motive behind tyrannizing other people. How is that winning at anything other than being an asshole?

Well, read up on the evolution of moral systems and such. Those rules are not entirely arbitrary (even the ones coming from a religious origin, those are still manmade and follow certain rationales).

The problem is that such laws don't always make sense beyond their expiration date (when conditions changed etc), but can still be held in high esteem due to their existing stronghold.

Re: India court legalises gay sex in landmark ruling

#88

Post by wccrawford »

Dawny33 wrote: post #17
xrisk wrote: post #6

Note that same sex marriage is still not legalised! We still have a long way to go before the idea of a same-sex couple becomes commonplace in our society.

Wait. Gay sex is legalized, but not marriage. That's so un-Indian-like

Well you certainly couldn't legalize marriage before sex. That would make no sense at all.

Re: India court legalises gay sex in landmark ruling

#89

Post by coldtea »

labster wrote: post #62
wallace_f wrote: post #42

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The world is so weird. I never understood the motive behind tyrannizing other people. How is that winning at anything other than being an asshole? Why don't people just leave other people alone? Is it so much different to tyrannize a woman for being feminine, or just being attractive? Most of us are instinctively disgusted by that--or at least claim to be?

Isn't the original purpose of society to control access to sex?

No, the original purpose of society is for its members to leverage each other to achieve more / be safer etc than as lone individuals.

Controlling access to sex was one of the ways societies found to achieve those goals.

For a simple example, communities with much laxer sex rules, found themselves frequently torn by relationship related feuds. Requiring (and punishing non-adherence) to sticking to some fixed husband/wife is what they found to prevent (not absolutely solve) such issues. They then invented religious and other justifications for the practice to normalize it further.

Certain kinds of marital arrangement also helped keep money in the same extended family, etc. Different such goals evolved different strategies to achieve them.

Re: India court legalises gay sex in landmark ruling

#90

Post by axilmar »

wallace_f wrote: post #42
vinni2 wrote: post #35

As a gay Indian this is a great news! but it is one thing to decriminalize it legally and complete different thing for societal acceptance and leading a normal life as gay person in India. For an average gay person in India this doesn’t change much. There is still a long way to go. This law was never a problem for me but my family and relative and neighbors are. But it is a good progress.

The world is so weird. I never understood the motive behind tyrannizing other people. How is that winning at anything other than being an asshole? Why don't people just leave other people alone? Is it so much different to tyrannize a woman for being feminine, or just being attractive? Most of us are instinctively disgusted by that--or at least claim to be?

Homosexuality is disturbing to people because their brain cannot find relevant patterns that have to do with homosexuality-related experiences (sights, images etc).

And when the brain doesn't find good pattern matches, it alerts the person of something very strange and potentially dangerous going on.

Morality systems come on top of this fundamental fact, because morality systems are just the conscious justifications we give to our feelings.

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