The Violence of Irrationality: response to Mohana Krishnaswamy
Pronoy Rai and Barath Ezhilan respond to Mohana Krishnaswamy’s opinion piece supporting the Supreme Court verdict on Sec 377 in The Hindu, Dec 21, 2013
The right time is now: response to TSR Subramanian
Karthik critiques former Cabinet Secretary TSR Subramanian’s premise that India is not ready to decriminalize homosexuality.
Sec 377 – I Oppose Decriminalization
Debunking popular arguments against reading down of Sec 377
Banker murder in Chennai: misreporting of child sexual abuse by Times of India
ToI article “Banker murdered by gay lovers” (Chennai ed. Oct 21, 2013) misleadingly reports young men sexually abused as children by adult man as “gay lovers”
Ismat Chughtai’s Lihaf: A Short Note
“Marz, ya Lat”: in her Urdu short story Lihaf (The Quilt) written in the 1940s, Ismat Chugtai conceptualized same-sex desire as both medical condition and as excessive habit, notions that co-existed in the colonial India of her time.
Gujarat’s First LGBT Pride a success: Surat October 6, 2013
Gujarat’s first LGBT Pride will be held in Surat on Sunday, October 6, 2013. Read post for details.
#VIBGYOR: Queering the Rainbow
Prashanth Ashok’s blogposts on the significance of the rainbow motif, long associated with the LGBT movement. This series was part of the Chennai Bloggers’ Club hashtag #VIBGYOR, a one-week series of posts Sept 1-7, 2013.
Call for EOI: SAHRA India West Zone Steering Committee
South Asian Human Rights Association for Marginalised Sexualities & Genders (SAHRA) seeks expressions of interest from those able to represent the west zone of India: Gujarat, Goa, Madhya Pradesh, Maharashtra and Rajasthan.
India’s LGBT activism history: early 1990s
A photograph, video interview and EPW article summarizing the early days of India’s LGBT activism, led by AIDS Bhedbhav Virodhi Andolan, against policy harassment and Section 377, the sodomy law.
Free & Equal: Global Campaign for LGBT Equality launched by UN
On July 26, 2013, The Office of the United Nations High Commissioner for Human Rights (OHCHR) in Cape Town, South Africa, launched Free & Equal, an unprecedented global public education campaign for lesbian, gay, bisexual and transgender (LGBT) equality.