After the Supreme Court decriminalized homosexuality and adultery by striking down sections 377 and 497, around 70% of Indians who participated in a recently created survey mentioned that such a decision “will liberate people from their marriage burden and help in having love affairs out of wedlock,” according to QZ.com
Basically, a whole lot of closeted Indians who were forced to marry someone of the opposite sex over the fear of prosecution have decided that heterosexual sex just doesn’t satisfy them and would rather have sex with someone of the same sex. The survey was taken on Valentine’s day on the French dating site, Gleeden, which has approximately 500,000 Indian users. The website was created by women with the purpose of bringing married people together to have extramarital affairs.
I won’t discuss the morality of such a website, but according to the site’s data, there was a 45% increase in same-sex encounters after section 377 was struck down, which leads me to believe that almost half of Gleeden’s Indian users are attracted to the same-sex and are now feeling free and liberated and want to experiment sexually with someone of their same-sex. The staff at Gleeden believe that “people feel freer to express their sexual preference and to pursue homosexual or bisexual encounters outside the wedlock.”
It’s interesting to think about the implications of criminalizing homosexuality for so many years and how even though it was illegal, people were probably exploring their same-sex attraction, albeit discreetly. Now like I said, I won’t discuss the morality of a website such as Gleeden, but I think that it is very important that now people are starting to feel more comfortable with their sexuality and are willing to explore it. I’m curious to see how the striking down of the two sections will affect family life in India. I suppose time will tell.
This article was going along pretty well, but then that pesky “I” started popping up.