What is the issue?

• The 377 judgment is a massive step forward, but society has to unlearn gender roles for it to be meaningful.

What are the recent developments?

• The five-judge bench of SC, in four separate but concurring judgments, has now affirmed that LGBTQ persons are entitled to equal rights that the Constitution provides its citizens.
• However, Section 377 will continue to apply to sex with minors, animals, and to non-consensual sex.

What are the concerns?

• The recent judgment has been welcomed for its insistence on the right to dignity for the identity that one chooses for themselves.
• But, how far will the legal emphasis on “self-determination” go in helping LGBTQ persons navigate their lives in a society full of prejudices still remains a question.
• The judgment reiterates that constitutional morality trumps societal morality, but it is the latter that will determine the day-to-day struggles of a community that defies heterosexual normativity, and hence is at increased risk of being subjected to violence and humiliation.
• Thus, Justice Rohinton Fali Nariman?s judgment rightly recommends periodic sensitisation and awareness programmes for all government officials, particularly police officials.
•  However, any sensitisation will be incomplete without the systematic devaluation of heterosexism, the institutionalised valorisation of heterosexual activity.
• Discrimination on the basis of sex can be both direct or indirect. It was stereotypes about gender roles that constituted the basis of criminalising same-sex relations, and which ensure discrimination.

What should be done?

• The protection granted for consensual acts in private must also be extended to public spaces where sexual minorities are vulnerable on account of their sexuality and appearance.
• Relegating same-sex acts into the private sphere would reiterate the “ambient heterosexism of the public space,” and thus sexual privacy should include the expression of one?s identity in public. 
• Thus, nothing short of a reimagination of gender can bring about true dignity to the many citizens and genders of India.
•  This historic judgment marks the start of this process