New Delhi (EFE) of unions.
“We don’t have to reinvent the wheel, people of the same sex have the same rights as our heterosexual brothers,” said one of the plaintiffs’ lawyers, Mukul Rohatgi, before a constitutional bench made up of five justices from India’s highest judicial body. , and directed by the president of the Supreme, DY Chandrachud.
The Supreme Court has the task of examining several petitions from homosexual couples seeking the legalization of their marriages, five years after the court struck down a British law of more than 150 years that punished acts “unnatural” and criminalized with jail sentences. same-sex relationships.
“What is the point of saying that only crime in the bedroom has disappeared, but not in the public sphere?” Rohatgi asked, explaining the difficulties faced by same-sex couples due to the lack of recognition.
The plaintiffs seek a “declaration from the highest court” legalizing same-sex marriages so that “the legislature will follow it… and then society will follow it too,” the attorney said.
Opposed to the petitioners is the Indian government, which on the one hand has argued that the duty to decide the legality of gay marriage falls within the jurisdiction of the Indian Parliament.
“This is not an issue that can be debated between five educated people on one side and another five on the other side,” Indian Attorney General Tushar Mehta said, noting that none of those present “know what a farmer thinks in South India or a businessman in the North”.
However, the Indian government not only questions whether the matter should be decided by the courts, but has repeatedly opposed same-sex unions by stating that a marriage is only between a man and a woman.
“The intention of the legislator has been to recognize a relationship between a biological man and a biological woman,” Mehta said during the hearing, who Chandrachud admonished by stating that “the notion of man and woman is not absolute.”
At the moment the Supreme Court has not announced when it will make the decision on homosexual marriages, and both parties are still in the presentation phase of their arguments.
The issue of legalizing unions between people of the same sex reached the Supreme Court after going through several lower courts, and has generated great expectation among the LGBT community in the Asian country.