There is a bizarre and disturbing case out of India where an Indian man has been criminally charged after his wife filmed homosexual liaisons in their home and took the evidence to the police. It is a crime punishable by life in prison to engage in homosexual relations in India. The case is an insight not only into the abusive Indian criminal code but the traditions of such arranged marriages. What is interesting is that the wife, a dentist, has also charged her in-laws with a crime after alleging that they had to know that their son was gay before the marriage.
The wife said that after their marriage, she developed some suspicions. That would seem mild given the fact that the husband refused to touch her, insisted on sleeping in separate rooms, and wore what she described as lady-like underwear and wear make up. They lived separately (working in different cities) for the first six months of their marriage. The husband, a 32-year old engineer with the financial services department of Infosys, would often return home early and the wife heard that men were coming to the house. She said that the continual use of pink lip gloss began to raise her suspicions. However, she says that, when she raised the problems with her in-laws, they told her that it was her fault.
She decided to set up hidden cameras for when she would be going to out of town for 10 days. She ended up capturing scenes of homosexual sex. One can understand the effort to confirm her suspicions, but the next step was unexpected. She burned a CD and then burned her husband by going to the police.
The husband was charged under the infamous section 377 of the criminal code. The section was declared unconstitutional by the Delhi High Court in July 2009, but the Supreme Court later overturned that ruling.
It remains astonishing to me that a nation with India would maintain such a law. However, the case also highlights the dangers of arraigned marriages. My maternal grandparents had such an arraigned marriage within their Sicilian community. They can be successful, but such marriages often reflect sexist or abusive treatment of girls in many cultures. It is also the denial of one of the most important decisions of a person’s life in selecting a partner.
What is interesting is the use of these arranged marriages for professionals. I once watched mothers bartering in a park in Beijing over arranging dates for their respective adult professional children. Chinese professionals are viewed as too busy to date and mothers continue to arrange marriages.
The wife in this case is understandably upset by an arraigned marriage gone bad. However, to convert the matter into a criminal charge is a terrible decision. The husband was wrong to get married to her if he is gay. However, the central problem is with the archaic tradition of arranged marriages. In any case, the use of an abusive criminal provision goes well beyond the reasonable, even for a shocked and legitimately angry spouse.
Source: Bangalore Mirror
pete
Dredd
In georgia what depends is whether it’s a john mule or a molly.
and leave the hinny out of it
=========================
I defer to the expertise.
Dredd
In georgia what depends is whether it’s a john mule or a molly.
and leave the hinny out of it
Paul C. Schulte
… it has been my experience that those who engage in homosexual sex …
========================
“Horsley laughed and said … You didn’t grow up on a farm in Georgia, did you?”
Wonder why that dood was called “Horsley” instead of mule headed?
Do right wingers transmit hiv when they do hot doggies:
(BINO Poetry).
“At least they did not arrest me like they do in ….”
Warren
I don’t think the HIV transmission rate for internet cam-sex is an issue here.
Last week I discussed the trend in America, predominately in heterosexual men, of “down low”. This case is a good example of how this behavior comes about through stigmatizing gays in a culture where they don’t feel accepted and are made to feel shamed and shunned into hiding their feelings, ultimately destroying hopes and dreams of others.
The question was asked: what would have happened had he been caming with another female? Most certainly, he wouldn’t be prosecuted by anti-gay laws. The wife might not have even been allowed a divorce.
Max-1 – it has been my experience that those who engage in homosexual sex on the ‘downlow’ are doing so because they are in occupations where being a homosexual is a problem or black, where being a homosexual is a problem. It is not a problem of shaming homosexuality.
warren, You are such a homophobe. You can get HIV from homosexual men. The right hates women, gays, and Obama, not necessarily in that order.
“Honour Killings” in the West
In the United States, where three women a day are killed by their male partners. Since 2013 that’s about 1095 women killed.
Maybe the women wanted to leave the marriage, or had found a new partner, but clearly the men felt betrayed and dishonoured by their partners and killed them. The media are quick to target women murders in Muslim-dominated countries. Maybe they should also look at the facts in the U.S. and Canada.
– Judy Haiven, Dept. of Management professor, St. Mary’s University, Halifax
This is interesting enough, but why would someone submit themselves to a certain death sentence?
What is it with this racist hatred of other cultures? Who are we to judge what they do in their own culture and their own country? Why do you want to impose your morality on them?
Shame on you.
Warren, My reading of the story is that the marriage was never consummated with them living separate lives. It’s unlikely that she was infected from her “husband”.
The wife might want to get a blood test, and hopefully will not show up HIV positive.
Do those oral in home saliva HIV test kits sold online work?
Jeez. In America people post on Craigslist looking for this kind of thing. That’s a cultural difference, for sure.
Watch the “BLAME TEH GAYZ” games begin…
… As if gays cause the unnatural fear of gay within straight people.
It’s like blaming your vertigo on the mountain climber…
He’s being charged under a draconian law that the Supreme Court reinstated back at the beginning of the year meant to recriminalize homosexuals. The law was originally overturned back in 2009.
Dogma and fear have won!
From 2009, on the ruling
http://m.indiatimes.com/news/india/gay-sex-is-illegal-supreme-courts-dogmatic-verdict-116535.html
Good for her! I hope they lock that rascal up and keep him there. The sneaky little creep just used her to cover up his real identity. What is she, just a nothing to be used like that?
Squeeky Fromm
Girl Reporter
India is still an unsafe place for women and homosexuals. These arraigned marriages with dowries have resulted in much heartache, murder, disfigurement and abuse. Time for India to live in this century. But that is up to them. An Indian nurse I worked with told me there is actually something called a Mother in law jail, for the many mothers in law who murder their daughters in law, often because of dowry disputes. Amazing this still happens in a country that is modern in other ways.
Should a man be sentenced to
prison for being homosexual? No….
if she find out that her hubby is gay , divorce option available there but not , I believe if he was gay , don’t marriage to girl…basically he is wrong for that but till I have the same question.. Should a man / female be sentenced to prison life time for being homosexual?..
it s All bloody parental arranged marriage fault…
RIP 377..
Yes. My thoughts exactly. Now that she KNOWS that her husband has a big secret that in India is a criminal offense…..she is likely in great danger from her in-laws. Killing her and replacing her with a more compliant and unknowing new wife would be the solution to keeping the secret.
Likely she felt (I am imagining) that this would be her way out of the marriage and to be able to get out alive.
I have to take a slightly different perspective on this. I agree that every part of the treatment of this husband and others like him at the hands of government is in conflict with their human rights I cannot cast as much blame on the wife.
The wife acted according to what the state provided her by these laws. If the government creates such a system for allowing what happened to occur, she is in one respect within her right to utilize it
In our society such a scene of adultery can be the basis for a civil divorce. So here if this woman taped her husband with another partner, she is within her right, if permitted by that state’s laws on recording such scenes, to enter this as evidence for her divorce case.
Furthermore if in our system the wife filmed her husband continually stealing metal from the neighbor’s farm she would be within her legal right to report it to the sheriff and provide them with the DVD.
Now to our situation in India. As a commenter mentioned obtaining a divorce in that nation requires a great amount of evidence, the wife could reasonably, from her frame of culture and the law there, gather evidence to support perhaps a future divorce and / or to provide evidence to authorities of what the government has declared to be a serious crime.
It is for these reasons I would not be to harsh upon this woman who is acting within the framework of the legal system she is under.
This draws even more evidence as to the importance and present danger to individuals who are in this case of different sexual orientation. It is because of the government’s, including the courts’, adherence to denial of civil rights of minorities that perpetuates the ultimate subjugation of others by creating a systemic problem that only grows by generating outrages such as this.
The problem lies solely on the parliament for not taking affirmative measures to end such discrimination.
Considering the lack of rights to women in India, this could well have been her only option. Women in such marriages are often subjected to abuse and even murder by their in-laws, especially if they have been unable to produce an heir. Custom and tradition do not allow the woman’s own parents to offer her protection or take her back into their own home, even if they are so inclined. She may have thought, and been correct in her theory, that this was her only option to get out of the marriage alive. There is a much more complicated problem here than just the fact of arranged marriages.