India takes a huge step back

In Shocking Ruling, India's Supreme Court Restores Criminalization of Gay Sex

fromlink wrote:

The Supreme Court of India said on Wednesday that a colonial era law banning gay sex should not have been struck down, reversing a 2009 decision, the NYT reports:

NYT wrote:

The ruling reverses a landmark judgment by a lower court, which in 2009 decided that an 1861 law that forbids “carnal intercourse against the order of nature with man, woman or animal” was unconstitutional. The 19th century law, passed by the British, makes gay sex punishable by 10 years in prison. Only Parliament can change that law, the Supreme Court ruled.

There is almost no chance that Parliament will act where the Supreme Court did not, advocates and opponents of the law agreed. And with the Bharatiya Janata Party, a conservative Hindu nationalist group, appearing in ascendancy before national elections in the spring, the prospects of any legislative change happening for years is highly unlikely, analysts said.