09 August,2009 11:39 AM IST | | Peyvand Khorsandi
Last month, India's gay community issued a collective sigh of relief after a Delhi court overturned a statute, in Section 377 of the Indian Penal Code, which made same-sex relationships illegal and punishable by a 10-year prison sentence.
Homosexual acts, defined as "carnal intercourse against the order of nature", are no longer the "antithesis of the right to equality" and an "unnatural offence".
This, of course, will not stop some from taking unnatural offence at the very notion of homosexuality.
u00a0"What will you girls do in a room?" is how MiD-DAY journalists Ishita Sharma and Vasudha Grover were greeted when they tried to book a room in the city, posing as a lesbian couple. "Are there chains involved?" the hotel owner might have asked. "And strawberry jam? Do you use props? Mind if I watch?"
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Far from welcoming gay customers with open arms (they might get the wrong idea), Delhi hoteliers are likely to say: "No room at the inn". After all, the last thing you would expect a gay couple to do at night is sleep. They may have trekked barefoot across the Himalayas but reaching a hotel room, sleep will be the last thing on their mind. Clearly, it will take years for what is legal to become socially acceptable.
Look at Israel last week a gunman entered a gay community centre in Tel Aviv, killed two people and injured around a dozen in a homophobic attack.
Look at the UK. Days after the Delhi ruling, Dr Michael Nazir-Ali, a Pakistani-born Anglican Bishop, called on homosexuals to "repent and be changed". The 59-year-old, who failed in his bid to become Archbishop of Canterbury in 2003, has succeeded in becoming the Bishop of Bigotry. In doing so, Dr Nazir-Ali aligns himself with the very old-school British sensibilities that were behind Section 377 148 years ago (instead of modern ones that will embrace a "Paki" in the Church of England).
It is in the face of such hypocrisy that Gay Pride events have traditionally marched. In Israel, Pride marches are often met with violent protests by religious fundamentalists one of the few things that radical Jewish and Muslim clerics in Israel and Palestine agree on is that gay people are "sick". (Perhaps the solution to peace in the Middle East is persecuting homosexuals.)
I believe that deep inside each of us is a princess waiting to express herself. I learned this from a fabulously glamorous friend of mine called Rudi, ten years ago. I asked how she always looked so good. "You have to celebrate the princess inside you," she said. Wow.
It made me think of a sketch by William Blake where a female spirit form was exiting the body of a man (popping out to buy milk, perhaps). Was that the princess inside him? The more I thought about it, the more I became convinced it was. In childhood we often read of princesses being rescued by dashing princes but what if the damsels in distress of myth and folklore are locked up not in castles, but in vaults in the recesses of the male psyche.
I read recently that the Rani of Jhansi's husband like to cross-dress. He loved theatre and costume and would have felt at home on a Pride march. How welcome he would be in Mumbai's march next week organisers fear that attendance may suffer because of the stigma attached to being gay. This makes it all the more important for straight people to come out and support this event.
So boys (or girls are less shy about these things), don your pink Gandhi topis, take to the streets on 16 August, dance, wave the rainbow flag and celebrate the princess inside you.
