Of gay, gaiety and glamour
Mihir Bholey
We, the people of India, are feeling gay, naïvely gay. And why shouldn’t we? After all we have ensured the demolition of formidable bastion of ethics, morality, scruples, taboos and everything else that comes in way of individual’s liberty. Soon there will be many more bastions of virtues crumbling and falling on the feet of our gay-fully’ benevolent society. When wisdom becomes folly, it’s wise to become naïve. So, the gay celebrates and media deliberates this new gender issue’ with remarkable tenderness. Voices of dissent are put on silent mode as if the victory is sweeping and overwhelming. Even whisperings of disapproval are being reported with a note of caution.
Gay activism swept the individual-centric’ Western world earlier, it’s sweeping us now. One wonders whether it’s the assertion for the rights of homosexual as individuals or assertion for making their unnatural behaviour sanctimonious. There can’t be a big fuss about homosexuality because that’s neither biologically nor socially ordained. It doesn’t even help in procreation. In itself it’s an act of acute perversion of deviant individuals, both men and women, eventually causing deadly sexually transmitted diseases and more than that, alluring and persuading others to join the cult and flaunt their unique identity in public. No doubt, despite that if it exists at some subaltern level of the society that has always been considered an aberration, a taboo and more than that — a stigma.
But today, defiance is considered fashionable and often intellectually invigorating too. Thus, gay activism finds supporters in the media, among the Page 3 authors, filmmakers, human right activists and many so-called intellectuals who would add every falling feather in their cap just to look distinct. We are overwhelmed with gays, gaiety and glamour.
Freedom and liberty are great ideals but equally potent disintegrators, hence, always guaranteed under conditions of public order, health and morality. But it seems, perhaps soon we would not need the conditions anymore. Today, there is activism in the name of gay and lesbian rights, as a natural corollary what might follow tomorrow could be activism to sanctify and accept incest relationship, bestiality and so on.
If homosexuals can enjoy their right on the ground that it’s the choice of an individual to lead such a life which lies in their private domain, then why can’t the same apply to a person visiting a sex worker or the drug addicts who also indulge into private acts?
In the similar fashion, if the drug addicts or those involved in sex trade also get into activism, would we consider repealing the Immoral Traffic Act or the Narcotic Act? After all, these are also done by individuals in their private domain. Can we afford to be so unimaginative to visualise what this activism might bring in offing? If we accept and legalise one deviant behaviour on the ground of individual’s liberty, we may have to redefine host of other deviant behaviours and delinquencies. Are we prepared to open the floodgate?
No, the ideological opposition to gay rights can’t considered to be a religious plank of the so-called Hindu fundamentalists’. This is a social and ethical dilemma caused by the flowing sludge of Western liberal humanism which is set to flush away the moral foundation of all faiths — Hinduism, Islam, Christianity and the rest.
Our fundamental rights are extension of the Western concept of humanism which is about the centrality of man. But here we often misconstrue man as an individual entity instead of reading man as mankind. Therefore, an individual or a group of individuals can’t behave like a sovereign unto themselves, making their own rules, adopting deviant behaviour and then demanding a special minority status within a dissenting majority group.
If each individual becomes a sovereign and a republic unto himself freedom and democracy will vanish. Those who argue that the law against gay relationship is archaic and thus should be amended because we are into the modern age perhaps don’t realise that what is modern today will become archaic tomorrow. What seems glamorous and fashionable today may be considered degenerated tomorrow.
Can consensus be the parameter to justify any unnatural act or perversion? If that is so, can we also legalise consensus or mercy killing, extramarital affair, prostitution and many more acts of turpitude? In no society social acceptance is subservient to a piece of legislation. It’s subject to its evolved social relevance and lasting value for the humanity. By legalising the act we will legally empower a cult to not only practice in private but also preach in public because that will be extension of the same right. This would empower and embolden the gays to flaunt their sexual preference in public. So what used to happen in private will happen in public domain. Consensus will not just happen, it will happen out of persuasion and persuasion through preaching the new ideal.
This is no fear-mongering. This is a simple act of social prognosis. It’s sad that we are also embracing the same perverted Western version of individual’s freedom which has ruined their social and ethical fabric and where a sizeable populace flaunts its sexual predilections. In India, the social and ethical cost of legalising homosexuality will be too huge to sustain.
— The writer is an academician. Views expressed are personal.