Volume 4 Issue 2 February, 2014
The Same Sex Schism…What is it?
The Same Sex Schism is all over the media and more so for all the wrong reasons!! Gay and lesbian persons have been the subject of much research and debate since time immemorial. The United Nations and other human rights bodies have postulated that all laws that discriminate against people on the basis of their sexual orientation violate human rights. At the core of the issue is whether people are born homosexual with homosexual tendencies, or if it is
more about the milieu they are raised in or even a choice as many conservative religions frame the issue in terms of sin, based on their interpretation of scriptural verses (Nature V/S Nurture). The shift in the understanding of homosexuality from sin, crime and pathology to a normal variant of human sexuality occurred in the late 20 th century. The American Psychiatric Association, in 1973, and the World Health Organization, in 1992, officially accepted its normal variant status. Many countries have since decriminalized homosexual behavior and some have
recognized same-sex civil unions and marriage. Recently India’s Supreme Court reinstated a ban on gay sex in the world’s largest democracy, following a four-year period of decriminalization that had helped bring homosexuality into the open in the socially conservative country and thus opening the Pandora’s Box again. For homosexuality to be
legalized all sectors of the society must participate for rational justification.
