Day 2 of the #Section377 Constitution Bench hearings also featured some of the most powerful court craft I have had the privilege of witnessing, courtesy @MenakaGuruswamy (Thread)
It wasn’t the fact that she was the first female lawyer to speak in a testosterone packed litigation (and courtroom), though that was crucial. It wasn’t the fact that she made it a point to address the sole female judge on the Bench time and again, though that was significant.
It was rather the sheer force of her arguments that seemed to rip through the tangles of legal discourse and force the Court to confront the human cost of this case.
In 2012 the judges in Koushal would keep asking the lawyers about the existence of LGBT persons. Today, @MenakaGuruswamy acknowledged the presence of the petitioners who stood in the room, while also invoking the names of those who weren’t there. #Section377
These are the individuals the law affects, and in story after story, she told the judges how many lives were going by living under the shadow of this law.
She opened up the space of what it meant to be queer, speaking of the right to love, of the Court’s own mandate in protecting individuals, of times when district judges had protected runaway inter-caste lovers from their families.
She spoke about the law’s specific impact on transgender persons, on how it impeded the promise of full citizenship that NALSA pointed towards. #Section377
In no uncertain terms, she reminded the Court of its duty to not just give a hearing, but to bridge the gap towards emancipation, to fulfil a promise that harks back to the framing of the Constitution. #Section377
At one point, the ASG attempted to interrupt @MenakaGuruswamy, prompting the Chief Justice to snap: “Let her speak!”.
I was 13 when I first fell in love with a boy. I didn't realize it then. I only knew that I was willing to learn 9th grade Sanskrit without any prior knowledge of the language just to be in a class with him. (1/9)
I was 16 when I fell in love with another boy. This time, I knew what it was, but was able to successfully convince myself it was a phase - or even better, that it was a one-off kind of love, that I'd just as easily fall for a woman. (2/9)
I was 17 when I realized that I wasn't going to fall for women. That year, for the first time I spoke the words that would make the jigsaw confusion of the last 6 years fall into place. "I'm gay" I said, sitting in the dark, practicing the utterance. (3/9)
On a break from the Supreme Court's #Section377 hearings, a very unexpected barometer of change. (1/5)
Six years ago, as the hearings in Suresh Kumar Koushal began, I came out to my parents. They reacted with anger and sorrow, then took me to a psychiatrist who informed all of us that homosexuality was a mental disorder which he could cure with aggressive treatment. (2/5)
I stormed out of the doc's office, and their house. Something broke between myself and my parents that day, a rift that has gradually been broached over the years with my mother's gentle efforts. My father has maintained a silence on this front. (3/5)
The third day of the #Section377 Constitution Bench hearing was a mix of pointed arguments from the lawyers arguing for decriminalization and horrific hate speech masquerading as submissions from the respondents who finally began their arguments. Thread on Respondents' arguments.
As with the 2012 hearings, there was little substance in what they actually had to say. Unlike the 2012 hearings, the judges did not allow these digressions to go on for long.
“How can we promote bestiality” began one lawyer, to which he was swiftly cut off by Justice Nariman – “Nobody has argued bestiality!”.
Today's #Section377 hearing at the Supreme Court was empathetic and invigorating, a far cry from the 2012 hearings that reduced the LGBT community to a series of acts, then refused to provide any kind of safeguards against state abuse because who after all was targeted? (Thread)
In the Koushal Court in 2012 , the two judges constantly interrupted counsel with outright irrelevant digressions on what constituted "carnal intercourse against the order of nature", the fig leaf of a phrase that targets LGBT persons under section 377 #Section377
Today, instead, there were many minutes of humdrum monologue, that bordered on boredom, as the lawyers submitted their arguments at length, as the affirmative words of Naz Foundation, Lawrence and Puttaswamy were spoken unchallenged in a court of law. #Section377