Anil/Mariya at Thrissur Pride 2011: Photo courtesy G. Asha

Anil Sadanandan (who also went by Mariya) was a trans activist living and working in Kerala, India. S/he was a vocal, queer activist who was open about her identity both in the media and at events like Kerala Queer Pride.

On May 10th, Anil/Mariya was brutally murdered. Accounts detail that they sprinkled chilli powder on her, presumably to keep away the police. We, her friends, family and those who knew her vibrant spirit — mourn her loss.

Anil’s murder is a brutal signal from the murderous homophobic patriarchy that trans people/queer people/ non-conforming persons of all kinds have no right to live, much less live with equality and dignity. We cannot let this horrible injustice be quietly erased. The one’s whose bodies and lives are the most vulnerable are also the ones who do most of the fighting. In Solidarity. For Justice.

Media coverage:

• NewsNET East: Murdered Trans- activist faced hate from neighbours, May 11, 2012
• NewsNET East: Mystery, Panic shrouds Queer activist’s Murder, May 11, 2012
• AsianAge: Gay rights Activist Murdered, May 11, 2012

 Take Action:

•  Justice for Maria group on FB – In solidarity. For Justice. For Maria/Anil.
• Please leave your tribute as comments below

This message was initially posted by Sumathi on Facebook and has been republished with her consent.

Source: ABC

President Obama today announced that he now supports same-sex marriage, reversing his longstanding opposition amid growing pressure from the Democratic base and even his own vice president.  In an interview with ABC News’ Robin Roberts, the president described his thought process as an “evolution” that led him to this place, based on conversations with his own staff members, openly gay and lesbian service members, and conversations with his wife and own daughters.

“I have to tell you that over the course of several years as I have talked to friends and family and neighbors when I think about members of my own staff who are in incredibly committed monogamous relationships, same-sex relationships, who are raising kids together, when I think about those soldiers or airmen or marines or sailors who are out there fighting on my behalf and yet feel constrained, even now that Don’t Ask Don’t Tell is gone, because they are not able to commit themselves in a marriage, at a certain point I’ve just concluded that for me personally it is important for me to go ahead and affirm that I think same sex couples should be able to get married,” Obama told Roberts, in an interview to appear on ABC’s “Good Morning America” Thursday. Excerpts of the interview will air tonight on ABC’s “World News with Diane Sawyer.”

Read the full story: President Obama Affirms His Support for Same Sex Marriage

Watch the video: President Obama Affirms His Support for Same Sex Marriage

Image source: Blogging4jobs.com

Here’s a truly inspiring and moving speech to listen to, even if you don’t know much or don’t care about the issue that caused it – a move in the state of North Carolina to pass a referendum to ban recognition of any kind of relationship other than that of a heterosexual couple.

Fairly obviously, the move has been driven by homophobic fundamentalist Christian zealots and they have taken things to extremes here. The language is so sweeping and total that it has even been protested by some opponents of gay marriage who point out that it will cause problems even for heterosexuals, and that it is too obviously anti-gay, which at least some mainstream anti-gay marriage activists keep saying they are not.

The dismal truth though is that despite these protests, despite a strong campaign against the amendment and despite the law being condemned by almost anyone with brains and influence in North Carolina, it passed. Despite a few pockets like Raleigh, and a somewhat more moderate attitude than the Deep South states, the conservative and evangelical votes passed the amendment.

This is a shame, but it wouldn’t in itself be worth posting if it was just about gay marriage, a subject which, I admit, I find it hard to get really worked up about. Its not that I don’t think it matters, but I do think there are a number of issues that matter for the LGBT community rather more. But that’s not the point of this video.

What this video is about is the importance of asking the right question. In it the Rev. Dr. William J. Barber, who is please note, a clergyman, and also the head of the North Carolina National Association for the Advancement of Colored People, points out powerfully that the question is not whether people should approve of gay marriage, but whether they should approve of hatred and discrimination being written into the constitution of a state that has known too much of it in the past. Whether they should approve of rights being taken away from people, for the first time since the era of slavery.

Listening to this speech reminded me of a parallel moment in the recent Supreme Court hearings in India, or two moments, since the same point was made by Fali Nariman and Shyam Divan. They said that the history of the Supreme Court was of interpreting the Constitution to steadily expand rights and protections, and they pointed to all the many cases and areas from womens rights, Dalit issues, childrens rights and now education.

And against this was mainly just one case – ADM Jabalpur vs Shivkant Shukla, which is notoriously known as the Habeas Corpus case. This 1976 case was heard at the height of the Emergency when the government was trying to get the power to keep people under indefinite detention with no chance of appeal under habeas corpus (produce the body), one of the most fundamental rights in the British system of jurisprudence we have inherited.

The case was heard by the five senior most judges in the SC and there’s no doubt that four of them were affected by the fears and atmosphere of that time since they voted 4-1  to allow indefinite detentions, and limit the power of habeas corpus. The case is the shame of the Supreme Court and at least two of the judges who voted in the majority, Bhagwati and Chandrachud, fairly clearly felt the guilt and spent the rest of their careers trying to make up for it.

The one judge who didn’t vote in the majority, HR Khanna, immediately lost his chance to become chief justice (all the other four did), which he saw quite clearly when he wrote his verdict. But his is the reputation that soared, both then and after – he was given the honour of having his portrait unveiled in Court Room #2 in the SC, and there the Court itself has admitted that his decision was the right one (and it was upheld by the Janata government in the 41st amendment, which put personal liberty beyond the purview of Emergency laws).

But as Mr.Nariman noted during the 377 hearings, the SC itself has never technically overruled the verdict, since it has never put together the bench of five or more judges needed to do that. The case remains as a blot on the SC record, because it involved taking rights away from people, not giving them – and if the Delhi High Court verdict is struck down and 377 upheld, once again rights will be taken away from people, from us.

And if it happens, it will again be because the court has asked the wrong question. Time and again we’ve seen that when we ask people if they approve of homosexuality or if they think homosexuality is natural, they get confused, unsure, quite often say no. But if you ask them if homosexuals should be treated as criminals, which is what the law does, most people would say no.

In this video Rev.Barber says that the question the people of North Carolina should ask themselves is not whether they approve of gay marriage, but if they approve of writing discrimination and hatred into the state constitution. And similarly the question the SC should ask itself is not whether it is ruling on whether homosexuality is normal or natural, but whether homosexuals should be treated as criminals. Sadly, North Carolina answered the wrong question, in the wrong way, but we should hope that the SC in India won’t.

Do you know that several MNC/Global companies look to attract, retain and promote diversity which includes LGBT diversity?

In fact you use the products/services of these companies everyday (Pepsi, Apple, Nike, Microsoft, Google, Toyota, Dell, Citigroup etc.). Many of these Fortune 500 companies have their operations right here in India and you might want to consider working at these great places.

• Human Rights Campaign: Best Places to work in 2012
• Diversity Inc: Top ten places for LGBT employees to work

More resources: Being LGBT at Workplace

This year, we are pleased to bring you Colours of Sexuality: Chennai Queer Film Festival 2012, a collaborative effort between local collectives Chennai Dost and Orinam, in partnership with Goethe
Institut/ Max Mueller Bhavan.

The festival will be held on three evenings from June 15-17, 2012, and will showcase Indian and international feature films, shorts and documentaries. There will also be a photography/art exhibit at the venue, and a panel discussion on June 16 on the topic of acceptance of LGBT youth by their families.

We invite entries of feature-length films, shorts and documentaries for screening at the event. Entries will be reviewed by a panel, and selections notified by 30 May 2012.

If you are interested in having your work considered for this festival, please use the form below

CQFF – Call for film submissions

Visit http://chennaiqueerfilmfest.blogspot.in/ for updates.

Richa Anirudh (source IBN7)

On April 29, 2012, IBN7′s Zindagi Live hosted an exceptional series of interviews with mothers of children who are gay or lesbian. Compered by Richa Anirudh, the 39 minute episode, primarily in Hindi, featured Chitra Palekar, Padma Iyer, Amita Sharma and Shobha Doshi. Counselor Nivedita Singh provided basic information and cleared misconceptions parents often have about their queer children.

While each of the mothers (and a grandmother) is amazing in her own way, we at Orinam could not help but be moved by Shobha-ji’s perspective on life and living as a cancer survivor and unflinching supporter of her son Shamit and his partner.

Thanks to Harish Iyer for tweeting these links, and to Richa Anirudh and the IBN7/TV18 network for such thoughtful programming.

If any of our readers would like to help with subtitling this in Tamil, please let us know.

The entire series may be viewed at the playlist here, or by clicking on the following segments:

Deen is a transman of South Indian origin.

DeenThePlaywright.weebly.com

Orinam thanks all those who have worked to bring our readers a compilation of 15 days of Supreme Court hearings in the Naz Foundation case held in Delhi earlier this year, 2012.

The file may be downloaded here.

Image source: allexperts.com

In the same (I quarter, 2012) issue of Indian Journal of Psychiatry as the editorial by Drs. Rao and Jacob titled ‘Homosexuality and India’ – the closest the Indian Psychiatric Society has come to an official progressive stand on homosexuality –  is an article by Dr Gurvinder Kalra from the Department of Psychiatry, Lokmanya Tilak Medical College and Sion General Hospital, Mumbai. Dr. Kalra provides guidance to psychiatrists who are encountering clients from the LGBT community in the wake of Delhi High Court’s 377 decision decriminalizing consensual same-sex behavior among adults.

Dr. Kalra echoes the Rao-Jacob editorial in calling on psychiatrists not to continue with the unethical practice of aversion therapy, and provides a simple flow chart illustrating how a psychiatrist should support a client who is lesbian, gay, bi or trans*.  He asks the doctor to assess whether the client has any accompanying (“co-morbid”) conditions needing psychiatric intervention, and provide those if needed. If there are no such conditions, he asks the doctor to facilitate the client’s journey towards self-acceptance, help him/her address internalized homophobia, provide referrals to local support groups, and assist her/him in coming out to immediate and extended family.

While similar points have been made previously in public forums by other psychiatrists such as Dr. Shekhar Seshadri from Bangalore, Dr. Suresh Kumar from Chennai, and Dr. Raman from Mumbai, having such an article published in the official journal of the Indian Psychiatric Society is laudable.

Read Dr. Kalra’s article here.

We, as members of the LGBT communities, can do our bit through

• providing structured voluntary assistance such as support groups
• letting psychiatrists in our towns know about LGBT resources available
• reaching out with peer support to individuals trying to deal with coming out issues.

There are LGBT groups and mailing lists in many Indian cities. Additionally, online resources may be found at  websites such as Orinam and GayBombay. If you would like to contribute to our coming out resources, please let us know.

Thanks to Sandeep for letting us know of this journal article.

I was in the 2 by 2 (the unofficial ‘gay’ compartment) of a local train coming home from Chhatrapati Shivaji Terminus, Mumbai. A guy jumped in just as the train was leaving CST station and stood very close to me. Youthful in his looks, with a pleasant demeanor, he caught my attention immediately. His gaze locked into mine in that timeless ritual of acknowledgement of our unspoken desires. As luck would have it, my boss called me on my cell at that very moment and I had to answer.

After I had finished my cell-phone conversation with my boss he continued his advances. By and by he asked me, “Where are you getting down?”, in English.

“Vidya Vihar” I answered.

“Then I, too, am getting down there today” he said smiling.

He had a soft, honest face and I did not get perturbed by this development.

“I am Amit. And you?”

“Deep” I said.

At Vidya Vihar we walked towards the RajaWadi garden. It was past 7 pm, and dusk had already settled in on this November Saturday evening. Amit said that he was born and schooled in Kashipur. His father was a headmaster in the school he studied. His first realization that he was gay came at the tender age of thirteen. His neighbor and friend Vipin, who was of the same age, liked to spend a lot of time with Amit. They would sleep in the same bed and, eventually, one thing led to another. Amit fondly recollected the days, months and years that he spent loving his friend. They had never heard the word “gay”,  yet their thoughts and acts together were the same as any homosexual teen in Denmark, or anywhere else in the world.

“It was always Vipin”, sighed Amit, sitting down on the park bench, “morning, noon and night.”

I sat beside Amit. He seemed to have lost himself in his thoughts; I don’t know if he remembered that there was I, a stranger, sitting by him listening to his reverie.

“Vipin on my bed. Vipin hugging me. Vipin and I, making love. I love you Vipin!” A single tear rolled down his eye. “That dreadful evening! The evening it all ended. Vipin fell over the rooftop trying to retrieve his kite. I can see it Deep! I can see it happening in front of me. Oh God! He is falling now!” Amit’s anguish was so powerful that it seemed I was transported to that place and time.

Suddenly I was no longer sitting on a stone bench at Rajawadi garden in Mumbai on a November evening in 2004. Suddenly we were back in Kashipur. I could see Amit’s love, his very heart, falling to his death. Vipin had smashed his head on the culvert and died instantly. In his breast pocket he had a picture of Amit and him together. Amit had to stop narrating at this point because he was so choked with emotions. I patted his arm in consolation.

“I was 20 at that time. Over the next few months I nearly lost my mind with grief”, continued Amit morosely. “I was brought to a local hakim. He prescribed marriage. I could barely manage to whisper my protests to that. My parents would hear none of it.”

Amit’s voice dropped to a dry rasp. “I pleaded with my illiterate mother to let me off. I wanted to kill myself. Seeing my suicidal tendencies my father got even more alarmed. They snared a demure lass of 18 from the next village and sat me down with her in the marriage `mandap’. I didn’t know what was happening to me! In my pocket I still had the picture of Vipin and me as the lass put the garland of marriage around my neck. Later that night, when I saw her undress, I started sobbing hysterically. She got scared and ran out of our bridal chamber to my parents.”

Amit was silent for a while as the memories got too much for him. He seemed to realize then that there was me sitting next to him on that bench. He clutched my wrist.

“I couldn’t help it Deep! I just couldn’t get myself to touch Geeta. Please forgive me God. I couldn’t touch her!”

One evening, when Amit came home from work he found Geeta hanging by her neck in their bedroom. The whole village came to watch their sorrow and condemn Amit and his hapless parents. The police got involved, as they suspected that it was a case of dowry death. They interrogated Amit and his old parents for seven long days and nights. When they were let go, the villagers wouldn’t let the family stay in their village. Amit’s father committed suicide by drinking pesticide. His mother just gave up living over the next few months. Amit was left all alone with a set of hostile neighbors. When things got too much for him, he ran away to Mumbai. That was a year ago.

Amit took a small photograph out of his breast pocket and proffered it to me. It had a beautiful lad holding Amit in his arms looking into Amit’s eyes. The photograph was smudged with tears.

“I have kept Vipin close to my heart Deep! All this time”.

It was getting darker and we got up.

“Time to go, Deep!”, said Amit suddenly, “time for me to go”.

He suddenly seemed in a hurry to leave the garden. He seemed to realize that he had been talking to an absolute stranger and probably felt embarrassed.

“So where do you live Amit?”, I asked.

“Some way down”, Amit said gruffly, “some way down”.

We got in the train at Vidya Vihar together. I was going to Mulund – my home. Amit, I still wasn’t sure.

“Do you know what day it is today?”, Amit asked me in the train. “It’s the day Vipin was snatched away from me”.

I was shocked and felt very uneasy. There was something amiss in the way Amit was sidling away from me towards the door. The crowd boarding at Ghatkopar pushed us apart. The train gathered momentum.

Suddenly I heard cries of “gir gaya!”, he’s fallen down! I pushed my way through the door way. Amit was lying by the tracks, his head a bloody mess, the speeding train already sending the dreadful site receding into darkness.

I can never forget that murky evening till the end of my days. The day a homosexual man lost his life on the alter of a murky custom called heterosexual marriage.