Huge news out of India this morning. Video below. The BBC reports:
India’s Supreme Court has agreed to revisit a previous judgement that upheld a law criminalising gay sex. Three senior judges said the 2013 ruling would be re-examined by a larger bench of judges, in a move that has been welcomed by activists. The judges said that the issue was a “matter of constitutional importance”.
According to Section 377 of the Indian Penal Code (IPC), a 155-year-old colonial-era law, a same-sex relationship is an “unnatural offence”. In deeply conservative India, homosexuality is a taboo and many people still regard same-sex relationships as illegitimate.
There has been a very vocal campaign to decriminalise homosexuality in India. On Tuesday, the court heard a “curative petition” – meant to “cure” an earlier court order perceived as a “miscarriage of justice”. The court said the five-judge bench would be headed by the chief justice of India.
No date for the hearing has been set.