We are coming to the end of the Gay Pride month in the city. On Saturday, the Pride Parade was the apogee of a breakththrough month in terms of new spaces and new audiences and allies, as the gay community found supporters they never knew they had.

In a first, medical students marched in the parade. Yet, such heartening debuts are negated when we still have medical textbooks painting lesbians as 'degenerates' and 'nymphomaniacs'. A mid-day front-page report had exposed how a seminal textbook for second year MBBS students, 'The Essentials of Forensic Medicine and Toxicology', has clubbed lesbianism in a chapter on sexual offences.