mardi 9 janvier 2018

Will India legalize gay sex?

Quote:

India*may be on track*for a major victory for gay rights after the supreme court agreed to re-examine a colonial-era law outlawing sex between men.

The court said on Monday that it would refer the question of the validity of section 377 of the Indian penal code to a larger bench for examination before October.

Section 377, modelled on a 16th-century British law, bans “carnal intercourse against the order of nature with any man, woman or animal”, and is punishable by life imprisonment.
...

About 1,347 cases were registered in 2015, most in regards to alleged sexual offences against children.

The supreme court observed in 2013 that fewer than 200 people had been convicted of homosexual acts under the legislation, but activists claim it is regularly used to*blackmail and intimidate LBGTI Indians, and stymie HIV/Aids prevention efforts.
http://ift.tt/2CJJJay

If you were largely indifferent towards LGBT rights you might ask why, if most people who were charged with and convicted of this offence had committed "sex offences against children, would it matter whether it remains in the penal code?

One of the important things is that just because someone isn't formally charged let alone convicted in a court of law doesn't prevent police and others to use it to harass homo/bisexual men (mostly).

The other important issue is that it isn't necessarily clear what, in practice, is illegal. The age of consent is 15 for opposite sex intercourse but since any gay sex is technically illegal it's not unlikely that an upset parent might report their child's same-sex lover to the police for something that would be legal had they been of opposite sex.

Both of these issues run counter towards one of the most important qualities of the rule of law: legal certainty. People should know, to a good degree of certainty, weather something is illegal or not so they adjust their behaviour accordingly. Arbitrarily and inconsistently enforced laws run directly counter to that.


via International Skeptics Forum http://ift.tt/2Dc6dSS

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