Why legislate against love? asks dna celebrity columnist Sandeep Khosla

It really is as simple as that.Why in a society plagued by so many ills — so much injustice, crime and corruption do we see fit to play judge and jury on what comes naturally?

Why when there is so much work to be done to lift India and her people out of poverty, injustice and need and into a life of opportunity do we reserve our attention on what adults choose to do in their bedrooms?

When did we lose sight of what is within our domain, what can and ought to be under the purview of Law and instead choose to pass judgment against what cannot and need not be helped?

Section 377 is abhorrent and moreover irrelevant on several levels.

It is not the job of society or the government or even the courts for that matter to police Love. That is what our hearts are for. They tell us whom to love and how to love them. And when we meet another, man or woman, who feels the same way about us, we express that love in myriad forms, including the sexual.

Apart from our baser human functions like breathing et al, Love is the only uniting force. It is the one thing that comes naturally to all of us. There is more than enough evidence that Homosexuality is something one is born with.  To see it as something abnormal is to confuse the norm with normal. Most people are born heterosexual. That makes it the norm. That Homosexuality is rare does not make it Abnormal. People with disabilities, people who are geniuses, people born with exceptional physical beauty or sporting ability, all of them are rare. But are they entitled to greater or lesser human rights because they are atypical? Sounds ludicrous doesn’t it? And hideously unfair.

This is what Section 377 stands for… It promotes the ludicrous and the unfair meting out of human rights in accordance with how you were made by Nature and punishes those who do not fit an arbitrary, narrow definition of what is Natural.

It isn’t easy being born different. It’s even tougher living different. Imagine a world that made you explain why you are you. A society that asked you to constantly justify why you love Y and not X. That demanded that you keep quiet, hide and be ashamed of you. Imagine being told that what is fundamental to your very being, Love, is both unnatural and criminal?

Those who speak of Homosexuality being against Indian Culture do both India and her Culture a huge disservice. Whether it is Mythology or Art or Literature, all of it is littered with the celebration of love and sexuality in all its myriad, non-typical forms. Our History too has seen us not only be tolerant towards difference but to embrace it. It is why the persecuted found refuge in our Land, it is why we have such a richness of languages, ethnicities, faiths and cultures in the one country. If anything is Indian it is the ability to find beauty in diversity and to absorb it into our composite state of being.

Surely Section 377 and the Discrimination it celebrates isn’t anyone’s idea of a fit Society? Surely there is nothing more immoral or against Nature than to legislate against the one thing that ought to be made into a Categorical Imperative. Love.