Is Homosexuality Still Taboo in India?

September 2018 was a historical month for the LGBT community in India and it was in this month that the honorable Supreme Court of India ordered the abrogation of Article 377, which had provisions for classifying same-sex activities between individuals as a criminal offense.

Well, this was the end of an era and the start of a new one, and many such individuals, who feared the police and court during their homosexual relations, came out freely in public and celebrated their independence day.

Three years later, in September 2021, you would find the LGBT community expressing themselves freely in public, on social media, and in all sorts of places where they were once not allowed. The fear of society is for namesake and now they fear no one when they have the Indian Judicial System with them.

However, do you think that things have turned different in the societies as well? I don’t think so. Homosexuality is still a taboo in almost every part, every state, every city, every village in India. In a regular Indian family, if you tell that one of your friends is homosexual, they would refrain you from being friends with such people, fearing you might also turn out similar in their company.

And not just the uneducated ones, even the most educated people and societies in India have this HOMOPHOBIA, which is a new word coined for the fear of gay people. Well, this is not actually a fear of gay people. In fact, it’s the fear of society when they know that you have a gay person in your family. Society is still not ready to accept the fact that an individual can have feelings for same-sex people as well.

Besides, families would never believe that same-sex relationships would ever be successful. How would they run the family? Who would work and who would stay at home? How will they have kids? These are some of the fears that still linger in society.

However, as people become educated, I think times will change with time and people would be more open-minded in their approach.