Ancient India didn’t think homosexuality was against nature
NEW DELHI: Was Indian society tolerant of homosexuality before the colonial administration proscribed it in 1860? The government has taken conflicting positions on this within the country and outside.
On a petition pending before the Delhi high court seeking to decriminalize homosexuality, the government said in its counter affidavit that that there were “no convincing reports to indicate that homosexuality or other offences against the order of nature mentioned in Section 377 IPC were acceptable in the Indian society prior to colonial rule.�
But when it was being reviewed by the UN Human Rights Council last year for the first time ever, India distanced itself from that provision when Sweden, arguably the most gay-friendly country in the world, questioned its record in ensuring equality irrespective of a person’s sexual orientation.
This is how Goolam Vahanvati, who was then solicitor-general and is now attorney-general, tried to save India’s face before the council as part of its official delegation. “Around the early 19th Century, you probably know that in England they frowned on homosexuality, and therefore there are historical reports that various people came to India to take advantage of its more liberal atmosphere with regard to different kinds of sexual conduct.
“As a result, in 1860 when we got the Indian Penal Code, which was drafted by Lord Macaulay, they inserted Section 377 which brought in the concept of ‘sexual offences against the order of nature’.
Now in India we didn’t have this concept of something being ‘against the order of nature’. It was essentially a Western concept, which has remained over the years. Now homosexuality as such is not defined in the IPC, and it will be a matter of great argument whether it is ‘against the order of nature.”
Vahanvati’s admission on the international forum that the ban on homosexuality was a western import and its relevance was debatable flies in the face of the government’s unabashed efforts before the Delhi high court to retain Section 377, complete with its colonial baggage and archaic notion of unnatural offences.
Whatever the politics behind this glaring contradiction, there is ample evidence placed before the high court by petitioner Naz Foundation substantiating in effect Vahanvati’s view that in the centuries prior to the enactment of section 377, India was rather accommodating of homosexuals. See Ancient India didn’t think homosexuality was against nature
Times of India
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Gay marriage case will go to Supreme Court: attorney
The attorney representing two same-sex couples who were denied a right to wed in California said on Thursday he expected the case to end up before the U.S. Supreme Court, which has yet to hear a case on the gay marriage issue.
“When it does get to the United States Supreme Court, we expect to win,” Theodore Olson, who was solicitor general under former President George W. Bush, told reporters after the first hearing on federal lawsuit that was filed in May.
See
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Voter ‘animus’ to be issue in Calif marriage case
When the U.S. Supreme Court overturned an amendment to the Colorado Constitution that outlawed discrimination protections for gay people, same-sex couples could not enter into civil unions or domestic partnerships anywhere in the nation, much less get married. But as they seek to persuade a federal judge to strike down California’s ban on gay marriages, lawyers for two unmarried gay couples are using that 13-year-old decision as their road map — one they expect will eventually lead the high court to take up the marriage issue. In the Colorado case, Romer v. Evans, the Supreme Court majority held that voters’ dislike of gays and the laws that several cities had approved to shield them from bias motivated the state amendment. Such “animus,” it said, was incompatible with the section of the U.S. Constitution that requires the government to treat its citizens equally absent a compelling reason to do otherwise. The attorneys behind the challenge to California’s Proposition 8 plan to argue during a pretrial hearing Thursday that by stripping gays of the right to wed, the voter-approved ban runs afoul of America’s founding framework in the same way — and for the same reason. “Romer is a strikingly similar situation to what we have here. You had a ballot initiative, a majority vote of the people, taking away a right,” said Theodore J. Boutrous Jr., a member of the legal team led by former U.S. Solicitor General Theodore Olson and veteran trial lawyer David Boies. “And there was no justification or rationale other than disapproval by that majority of that group.” U.S. District Chief Judge Vaughn R. Walker on Tuesday issued a tentative order to fast-track the case in his San Francisco court. Among the questions he said he wants covered at trial are whether sexual orientation is unchangeable, if permitting same-sex marriage “destabilizes” traditional unions and whether Proposition 8’s ballot history demonstrates the measure had “discriminatory intent.” California Attorney General Jerry Brown, a defendant in the case, has sided with gay rights advocates and declined to defend the ban, which overturned a California Supreme Court ruling that had legalized same-sex marriages. The state Supreme Court five weeks ago upheld the measure, saying it represented a valid exercise of voters’ authority to amend the California Constitution. Proposition 8’s sponsors, a coalition of religious conservative groups called Protect Marriage, has been given permission to intervene in the federal case. In court papers, the group’s lawyers rejected the assertions that anti-gay attitudes fueled the November measure and that the 1996 Colorado case was applicable. “Nothing in California law, either Proposition 8 or otherwise, indicates that Californians harbor animus towards gay and lesbian individuals,” they wrote. Since the U.S. Supreme Court’s 6-3 decision, attorneys for gay rights and Christian conservative groups have debated whether the Romer decision could be used to expand gay rights. The ruling marked the first time the Supreme Court determined that the Constitution’s equal rights guarantees extended to gays and lesbians. “The basic point of Romer is that government cannot ever act out of hostility toward a group of people, and whether that is in the context of marriage or anti-discrimination law, the point carries over,” said Suzanne Goldberg, who worked on the case and now directs Columbia Law School’s Sexuality and Gender Law Program. The ruling has been cited, though so far unsuccessfully, in past challenges to gay marriage bans in Nebraska and Florida. At the same time, gay rights groups mostly have shied away from pursuing federal marriage cases in favor of pursuing marriage rights in state courts. Legal observers on both sides of the debate agree, however, that California’s Proposition 8 presents novel questions that could make the issue ripe for federal action.
San Francisco Chronicle
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Schwarzenegger, AG Brown oppose bid to immediately block Prop 8
Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger and Attorney General Jerry Brown on Thursday urged a federal judge to keep Proposition 8 in force for now, arguing that it would create too much uncertainty across the state to put the voter-approved ban on gay marriage on hold while the latest legal challenge unfolds in the federal courts.
In court papers, state lawyers argued against an injunction that would freeze the current gay marriage ban, opposing a request filed in federal court in San Francisco last month by two gay couples seeking the right to marry. Backed by former U.S. Solicitor General Theodore Olson and renowned lawyer David Boies, the couples moved to counterract the California Supreme Court’s recent ruling upholding Proposition 8, arguing that it violates equal protection rights under the federal constitution.
Brown and Schwarzenegger argued separately that it would create too much havoc to put the law on hold until the constitutional issues are resolved, perhaps eventually by the U.S. Supreme Court. The governor and attorney general did not take a position on the federal constitutional questions, focusing only on whether Prop 8 should be blocked while the case is litigated, a move that would allow same-sex couples to resume marrying in California.
Brown had previously urged the California Supreme Court to overturn Prop 8, and Schwarzenegger has said publicly he believes the courts eventually will permit gay marriage.
See Schwarzenegger, AG Brown oppose bid to immediately block Prop 8 San Jose Mercury News
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Dismay Over Obama’s ‘Don’t Ask, Don’t Tell’ Turnabout
When Barack Obama sought the presidency, he pledged to reverse the “Don’t ask, don’t tell” policy preventing gays and lesbians from serving openly in the U.S. military. Yet on Monday, the Supreme Court rejected a gay Ohio soldier’s challenge to the law — with the legal backing of none other than the Obama Administration.
James Pietrangelo II, the former Army infantryman and lawyer whose case the high court declined to review, reserved most of his ire for President Obama instead of the court. “He’s a coward, a bigot and a pathological liar,” Pietrangelo said in an interview with TIME shortly after the high court declined to hear his appeal. “This is a guy who spent more time picking out his dog, Bo, and playing with him on the White House lawn than he has working for equality for gay people,” he added. “If there were millions of black people as second-class citizens, or millions of Jews or Irish, he would have acted immediately” upon taking office to begin working to lift “Don’t ask, don’t tell.” Pietrangelo fought in Iraq in 1991 as an infantryman, and returned as a JAG officer for the second Iraq War, before being booted out in 2004 for declaring he was gay as he was readying for a third combat tour. He was representing himself before the high court. (See pictures of the gay rights movement.)
The Obama Administration, in its brief in the case last month, said a lower court acted properly in upholding the gay ban. “Applying the strong deference traditionally afforded to the Legislative and Executive Branches in the area of military affairs, the court of appeals properly upheld the statute,” argued Elena Kagan, who as Solicitor General represents the Administration before the Supreme Court. The bar on gays serving openly is “rationally related to the government’s legitimate interest in military discipline and cohesion,” her 12-page filing added.
The endorsement of “Don’t ask, don’t tell” by the Administration marks the latest rightward tack by Obama. The President denounced many of George W. Bush’s national-security policies during the campaign, but in office has adopted more conservative positions, including endorsing military commissions to try purported terrorists, and declining to release a second batch of photographs depicting alleged U.S. maltreatment of Iraqi detainees. His stance on “Don’t ask, don’t tell” may be more surprising, because Obama aides have made clear the President wants the ban lifted eventually. (Watch a gay marriage wedding video.)
Pietrangelo doesn’t buy the line from Obama aides — and the Pentagon — that they’re too busy grappling with a faltering economy and two wars to handle the gay ban right away. “It’s a complete lie that he has too much stuff on his plate — this is the guy who criticized Bush for not being able to multitask,” Pietrangelo says. “We have an old saying in the military — the maximum effective range of an excuse is zero meters.” See Dismay Over Obama’s ‘Don’t Ask, Don’t Tell’ Turnabout TIME
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New Prop. 8 court challenge brings former legal rivals together
The California Supreme Court failed to protect gay couples’ fundamental right to marry when it upheld Proposition 8, forcing same-sex couples to appeal to the federal courts to remedy the injustice, two prominent lawyers said today in announcing a lawsuit on behalf of two gay couples.
Former U.S. Solicitor General Theodore Olson, a renowned conservative, and David Boies, who opposed Olson in Bush v. Gore in the 2000 fight over the presidential election, cast their collaborative effort to restore the right of gays to marry in California as a moral imperative to correct an injustice. Their suit seeks an immediate injunction on Prop. 8’s ban, thereby allowing same-sex marriages to resume while the case makes its way through the federal court system.
But Olson’s role in the gay rights mission prompted much speculation about his motives. The former Bush administration official, who lost his wife in the Sept. 11 terror attacks, conceded that the federal courts might not be ready to recognize sexual orientation as a class in need of protection from discrimination, but he said he hoped “that people don’t suspect my motives,” vowing to demonstrate his commitment to equal rights by winning the challenge.
Boies vouched for Olson as “committed in heart and soul to equality and committed in heart and soul to the Constitution.” See New Prop. 8 court challenge brings former legal rivals together Los Angeles Times * Tags = gay men gay news lesbian news transgender bisexual
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Ken Starr vs. transsexual in Prop 8 case
Kenneth Starr and Shannon Minter, lead attorneys in the California Supreme Court case that will decide the fate of same-sex marriage in the state, are as different as the competing sides they represent.
Starr, dean of Pepperdine University School of Law, is best known for leading the inquiry into President Bill Clinton’s affair with a White House intern.
Since then, the former federal judge and U.S. solicitor general has dedicated himself to conservative causes, including writing briefs for the Mormon church in a previous gay marriage case in California.
Minter, legal director of the National Center for Lesbian Rights in San Francisco, is a transsexual who spent his first 35 years as a female. He was a lead counsel in the state Supreme Court case decided last May that allowed same-sex couples to marry, a ruling that was reversed in November when voters approved Proposition 8.
Starr and Minter will square off Thursday in the most closely watched California Supreme Court hearing in a generation. They’re set to deliver oral arguments in three suits in which supporters of gay marriage contend that Proposition 8, which limits marriage to a man and a woman, is unconstitutional.
Minter, 48, representing gay rights groups, will be the first attorney to address the court in San Francisco. Starr, 62, will deliver the final arguments on behalf of the Yes on 8 campaign.
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Fury Over Obama’s Gay-Affirming Justice Picks
Social conservatives are calling on Congress to reject several of President Obama’s picks to the Department of Justice, including the No. 2 position of deputy attorney general, because they support gay and lesbian equality and the right of a woman to have an abortion.
Republicans on Capital Hill grilled David Ogden, nominated to be the deputy attorney general, at length about those issues at his Thursday confirmation hearing, reports The Associated Press.
Ogden filed a brief in support of the gay defendants at the center of the 2004 Supreme Court case Lawrence v. Texas which declared sodomy laws unconstitutional. Ogden has also defended organizations that support the right of a woman to seek an abortion.
“You’ve taken some very extraordinary positions, some left-leaning and unorthodox positions,” Senator Jon Kyl, a Republican from Arizona, told Ogden.
Evangelical groups, including the ardently anti-gay Focus on the Family and the American Family Association, have objected to Ogden’s nomination.
Similar concerns are being expressed over the nomination of Elena Kagan to Solicitor General. Kagan, who is openly gay, is being denounced for her support of open service for gay military personnel.
See Fury Over Obama’s Gay-Affirming Justice Picks
On Top Magazine, OH
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Iowa Supreme Court Hears Arguments in Lambda Legal’s Case Seeking Marriage for Same-Sex Couples
”We put our best case forward, and hope that the Court breathes life into the Iowa Constitution’s promise of equality,” said Camilla Taylor, Senior Staff Attorney and chief architect of the lawsuit based in Lambda Legal’s Midwest Regional Office in Chicago.
”Iowa has a long, proud history of protecting individual rights. The government has no business standing in the way of a loving same-sex couple who wants to take responsibility for each other and their family,” said Dennis Johnson, former Iowa Solicitor General and partner at the firm Dorsey and Whitney who argued the case on behalf of Lambda Legal’s clients.
In December 2005, Lambda Legal filed a lawsuit with the Polk County Court on behalf of six same-sex couples who were denied marriage licenses in Iowa, arguing that denying marriage to same-sex couples violates the liberty and equality guarantees in the Iowa State Constitution. In August of 2007 the district court ruled that denying marriage to same-sex couples is unconstitutional. In March 2008, 15 friend-of-the-court briefs were filed supporting same-sex couples seeking the right to marry, and the right of their children not to have their families branded as inferior. Those briefs were signed by hundreds of Iowans including former Lieutenant Governors Joy Corning and Sally Pederson. To learn more about the briefs visit: http://www.lambdalegal.org/news/pr/iowa-amicus-filing.html. The final decision in this case will be made by the Iowa Supreme Court.
Lambda Legal clients attending the argument: Kate and Trish Varnum of Cedar Rapids; David Twombley and Larry Hoch of Urbandale; Dawn and Jen BarbouRoske and their daughter McKinley of Iowa City; Ingrid Olson and Reva Evans of Council Bluffs; Jason Morgan and Chuck Swaggerty of Sioux City; and Bill Musser and Otter Dreaming of Decorah.
Tonight the community will gather to discuss this historic event with remarks by Camilla Taylor, Lambda Legal’s Senior Staff Attorney and chief architect of the lawsuit.
“Making the Case” Des Moines Reception — Tuesday, December 9, 2008 - 6:30-8:00 PM Pappajohn Center, 1200 Grand Ave., Des Moines.
Lambda Legal and One Iowa are hosting a series of town hall meetings across the state about the oral arguments and the lawsuit. For a list of dates and cities, please visit http://www.lambdalegal.org/take-action/events/iowa-town-hall.html.
The Iowa case is: Varnum v. Brien
Camilla Taylor, Senior Staff Attorney and Kenneth Upton, Jr., Supervising Senior Staff Attorney are handling the case for Lambda Legal. They are joined by former Iowa Solicitor General Dennis Johnson of Dorsey and Whitney in Des Moines.
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Second Changing Attitude Nigeria leader granted asylum in UK
Stephen Wariebi Hobobo, co-leader of the Changing Attitude Nigeria (CAN) group in Port Harcourt, has been granted asylum in the UK. Stephen applied for asylum in May 2008 having arrived in the UK in April.
He travelled to the UK following the violent assault on his life which occurred in Port Harcourt on Maundy Thursday 20 March 2008. He was savagely beaten in an attack outside the compound where the funeral ceremony for the sister of Davis Mac-Iyalla was taking place.
Stephen went into hiding and flew to the UK in early April, still having a valid visa from his previous visit in November 2007 when he addressed a National Union of Students Conference. Having made contact with Changing Attitude leaders here and consulted with them about his safety and future in Nigeria, he applied for asylum in the UK. In September he was notified that his application had been refused. He appeal against the refusal was heard on 20 November in London. His solicitor informed him that his appeal had been successful on 4 December.
In granting asylum to Davis Mac-Iyalla and Stephen Wariebi Hobobo, the UK Government has recognised that lesbian and gay Christian leaders in Nigeria are under serious threat to their lives when their status and activity enters the public realm.
Davis Mac-Iyalla entered the public realm from the founding of Changing Attitude Nigeria in August 2005, gaining publicity in the national Nigerian press for the first General Meeting held in Abuja. The leaders of the nine other Changing Attitude groups in Nigeria have carefully protected themselves by maintaining a low profile. Colin Coward and Stephen Coles met many of the leaders at the meeting in Togo in May 2007. A photograph of those present was posted on the CA web site with the faces of all but Davis Mac-Iyalla and the two English priests present pixellated to protect their identities. One of those is Stephen Wariebi. The General Meeting held in November 2005 and the leaders’ meeting in Togo both attracted international attention in the Anglican Communion. Reports were posted on the Changing Attitude web site and the events received attention in Abuja where the headquarters of the Church of Nigeria are located. Reports from contacts inside the Church office confirmed this.
Stephen’s invisibility was compromised in 2007 when the CAN group in Port Harcourt developed a relationship with an orphanage as part of their group ministry and pastoral work. On Sunday 17 June 2007, 48 lesbians and gay men held a party for the children of the Orphanage Home, Borokiri, Port Harcourt, Rivers State. A report of the party was posted on the Changing Attitude web site on 19 June 2007 which included a picture of Stephen. We posted the report and pictures of the Port Harcourt orphanage event on the web site and named people because we wanted to prove that lesbian and gay Christians in Nigeria are not only concerned with their own campaign but are actively demonstrating Christian witness to others.
Stephen was able to join Davis Mac-Iyalla and two other leaders of Changing Attitude Nigeria as part of our team at the Lambeth Conference in July/August. Although the other two leaders participated in public events in Canterbury, we have been careful to protect their identities since both have returned to continue their work in Nigeria.
Changing Attitude has tried to maintain a fine balance between protecting lesbian and gay group members in Nigeria and providing information to the public to demonstrate the reality of lesbian and gay activity and experience. Davis Mac-Iyalla has been the public face for LGBT members of Changing Attitude Nigeria. Our inability to name individuals and publish pictures of Changing Attitude activity in Nigeria enables those opposed to us to claim that none of these things happen in reality. It is a difficult to raise the profile of LGBT people and protect them from attack at the same time.
Leaders and members of other Changing Attitude groups have had to go into hiding to avoid being threatened and attacked. A member of the group in Benin City was shot in his arm by members of a cult gang who were pursuing him because he was identified as gay. The group leader in Benin City was threatened in many phone calls by members of a cult gang. He was attacked, his wallet and identity card stolen and was threatened with exposure as gay. He went underground for safety until he was advised that it was safe to return home. Almost every member of the Benin City group reports stories of being attacked because they are gay.
In granting asylum because of their sexuality to Davis and Stephen, the UK Government accepts that Nigeria is now too dangerous as a country for any LGBT person who is actively and publicly visible. The recent public outcry against the Revd Jide Rowland Macaulay of the House of Rainbow MCC Church in Lagos, reinforces the UK Government policy. Jide was forced to return to the UK for his own safety.
Archbishop Peter Akinola said in an interview in the Nigerian Sunday Tribune published on 7 December 2008 that: “Again, we have never said that homosexuals are to be found only in England or America . They are to be found everywhere in the world. They are in America, they are in England, they are in Nigeria, Uganda, Arabia, they are in Kuwait, they are everywhere in the world.”
This is very different from the stance previously maintained by Nigerian Primates and bishops, that homosexuality is not known in Nigeria but has somehow been imported from the west.
The Archbishop also claims, in accordance with his tradition, that: “Our culture abhors [homosexuality], the order of creation abhors it. The word of God says no to it and therefore we chose not to celebrate it. In our culture, you see two men say they are homosexuals how do you relate to them, we know it is an aberration and we have always said it is an aberration…”
It is the attitude of abhorrence, aberration and judgement expressed by the Archbishop that fuels prejudice against LGBT people in Nigeria when the law is already punitive and social and religious attitudes are hostile.
He said that: “… people who suffer from this problem can always come to the church for counselling, for prayers. I tell you this, many have been delivered from this problem in America, England. But if they are so shy and they cannot come out to say this is our problem then, what do we do. But we cannot accept them. So, that they are in Nigeria doesn’t bother me. If any of them comes for help, we would help, but if they don’t come for help, they are answerable to their God who created them.”
The LGBT members of CAN do not believe that they can safely come out and reveal themselves to their priests, let alone their congregations. They fear that their own priest will not offer them counselling and prayers but will react negatively to them. The problem they would bring to their priest is in any case not the problem of their homosexuality, but the problem the church has with homosexuality. They do not want to come to church for help to be changed or healed. LGBT people know, as Archbishop Akinola does not or possibly cannot know as a heterosexual man, that we do not need healing from our innate, God-given sexual identity. We long for the church to learn “… what it is that the Lord requires of you: only to act justly, to love loyalty, to walk humbly with your God.” Micah 6.8
The Reverend Colin Coward Director of Changing Attitude England
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