New Delhi: The Apex Court today has referred a plea to decriminalize homosexuality under section 377 of IPC to a Constitution Bench, reported Hindu.
The court said, “The determination of the order of nature is not a constant phenomenon. Societal morality changes with time, law walks with life. A section of people can’t live in fear of their individual choice.”
Arvind Datar, counsel for Petitioners argued in the Supreme Court about the clarity of the consensual sex which punishes one of the partners while leaving the other which the Court did take a note and said “individual autonomy and individual’s natural inclination cannot be atrophied unless the restriction is reasonable to yield to the morality of the public at large.”
Arvind Datar was speaking for the lesbian, gay, bisexual, and transgender (LGBT) community and said that section 377 was not a “reasonable restriction. It has the potential to destroy individual choice and sexual orientation,” adding that right to privacy means “I have a right to choose my sexual partner.”
The petitioners who have filed the plea are Navtej Singh Johar, a Sangeet Natak Akademi Award-winning Bharatnatyam dancer, a senior journalist Sunil Mehra, a restaurateur Ritu Dalmia, and Aman Nath, founder of the Neemrana chain of hotels.