Most of us take for granted that our sex lives are strictly private. So imagine, just for a moment, what it means to fight for that right. To march down a busy street in bizarre fancy dress, wearing your sexual preference on your sleeve, under the greedy glare of voyeuristic television cameras and the sneer of India’s most liberal city. Mumbai’s Gay Pride Parade last week was an act of stark courage and naked defiance. But pride?

There is nothing proud about pleading that what two consenting adults do in the privacy of their bedroom is a fundamental right, not a criminal act liable for life imprisonment under Section 377 of the Indian penal code. There is nothing proud about protesting that a gay man is as unlikely to be a paedophile as a heterosexual one. There is nothing proud about being the AIDS control program’s poster boy, “supported” by so-called “liberals” at pains to point out that homosexuals are indeed entitled to human rights — not because they are human, of course, but because they are a “high risk group” that could infect our society with a deadly disease.

There is nothing proud about arguing that homosexuality is “genetically determined”, and cannot be “helped”, somewhat like being a hapless victim of a congenital defect. Or that it is demographically constant, and therefore “normal.” There is nothing proud about informing sniggering employers and colleagues that being gay is not a professional liability, nor does it put homophobic males at risk of being sexually harassed. And there is nothing proud about loneliness and lies; about beseeching your own family and friends to accept you for who you are.

... contd.