The last several days have been awash in rainbow colours and jubilation following the Supreme Court’s landmark judgement relating to the application of Section 377 of the Indian Penal Code.

In overturning the 150-year-old law that criminalised gay sex, among other things, the SC opened the door to a larger canvas of human rights involving the right to make a choice and live in dignity without fear and discrimination.

But this flood of support for the right to be yourself started out, way back in 2001, as a trickle in a fight for access to healthcare for marginalised gay and transgender people.

“There was constant police harassment of the gay community and our outreach workers trying to distribute condoms. It was heartbreaking to see young boys reach out to us asking for a medicine to cure them,” recalls Anjali Gopalan of Naz Foundation, who took the first major step against Section 377, as it got in the way of dispensing healthcare, among other things.

“Some people were given shock treatment to make them straight. It was a time when people were not willing to talk about it and we realised that if it was not decriminalised, nothing would change,” she says.

The recent SC judgement did not just revise application of Section 377, “it was borderline spiritual,” says Gopalan, referring to one of the judge’s (Justice Indu Malhotra) statement that history owed an apology to the LGBT community.

Making changes with regard to Section 377 was important to India and the world, says Terri Ford, Chief of global advocacy and policy with the AIDS Healthcare Foundation, and people were celebrating in the US and Europe as it set an example for change. “Other Commonwealth countries should follow India’s lead and repeal homophobic laws,” she says. On the sense of freedom expressed by people celebrating on the streets, she asks, “Where were all these people?” Getting people out of “hiding,” she says, was important to help them access healthcare services. “Many people come to our (AHF) clinics as they are not discriminated against,” she says. To get “as many people to the clinic” is also AHF’s approach to tackling HIV/AIDS, as the world works towards an end to the epidemic. Across the world, doctors need to be sensitive to the specific needs that come up, for instance, in dealing with women living with HIV, she points out.

Changing the conversation

Conversations need to be altered between doctor and patient, nurse and patient, parent and child, she says, and changing the law is the most important part in paving the way for a change in culture to more accepting ways.

Naz’s Gopalan is guarded in answering if the recent judgement will dramatically change the way marginalised gay or transgender people access healthcare services. “Doctors need to say that homosexuality is not a disease. Government needs to train doctors to understand health issues specific to the homosexual community, it needs to be part of the educational curriculum,” she says, referring to how marginalised people are too nervous to even bring up their health problems.

Recently, psychiatrists came out saying homosexuality was not a mental illness. In fact, just this week, Gopalan says, they were to meet the Medical Council of India on the cancellation of three doctor licences for shock therapy. “We can’t sit back now,” she says, on the many conversations that have started afresh, only this time, they are armed with a more benign law.

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