Opposing this is the Orwellian sounding Joint Action Council, Kannur or JACK. JACK believes that AIDS is a Western myth, created by greedy pharmaceutical companies to sell panaceas for a non-existent malady. Their lawyer, Ravi Shankar Kumar, opposes legalising homosexuality on medical grounds, telling me that there has never been any link established between homosexuality and AIDS. Kumar is not from the Stone Age: he promised to send me a “soft copy” of his statements by email.

B.P. Singhal, former BJP Member of Parliament, has also intervened to oppose the petition, though his concerns are more moral than medical. Stocky, well-dressed, and with an old-world formal courtesy about him, he has had a long career in the Indian Police Service, and a shorter one as chairman of the Film Censor Board. “Homosexuality is neither congenital nor incurable,” he told me, “and I have placed on record medical evidence about this.” Heating up, he added: “Look at these malls growing all over the place. Don’t you think that our morality is under attack? Anyway, the law will not change anything. Homosexuality is not accepted in society, and that will not change.” Why then, did he care about the judgment? “Legalising gays will be calamitous,” he responded, “It will encourage all kinds of vices... brothels.”

In terms of their legal arsenal, neither Singhal nor JACK seems a match for the committed and better-coordinated NGOs they’re opposing. Producing case after well-researched case, and affidavit after moving affidavit, their research led the Chief Justice to say, “You seem to have gathered much medical evidence that homosexuality is not a disease, unlike the [other side’s] lawyer, who argued in court that ‘homosexuality is a matter of fun’.”

... contd.