The Latest

Section 377 Lawyers Come Out As A Lesbian Couple, Say It Was A Professional & Personal Victory!

bySwati Dubey
20th July 2019
2 minute read

India achieved a milestone in its journey of being more inclusive as a nation with equal rights on September 6, 2018. The Supreme Court scrapped section 377 of Indian Penal Code which criminalized consensual gay sex. The fight was, however not an easy one!

Lawyers, Menaka Guruswamy and Arundhati Katju led the five original petitioners and fought for equal rights for the LGBTQ community. And, they successfully managed to convince the five-judge panel of SC but the victory wasn’t just limited to the professional grounds!

Both of them are accomplished lawyers. Menaka is a Rhodes scholar with an LLM degree from the Harvard Law School as well as a D.Phil from the Oxford University. She is a fellow at the Institute of Advanced Studies in Berlin (2016-17). She is also a visiting faculty at several prestigious schools such as Columbia Law School, Yale Law School, and New York University School of Law. Katju is also a James Kent Scholar and holds an LLM degree from Columbia.

After almost a year of their remarkable victory, advocates Menaka and Arundhati have come out as a gay couple. In an interview with CNN, the duo opened up about their relationship and their fight against section 377.

“The loss in 2013 was a loss as lawyers, a loss as citizens. It was a personal loss. It is not nice to be a ‘criminal’ who has to go back to court as a lawyer to argue other cases,” Menaka said.

“We had a court where we practiced as lawyers … and this court had just told us that gay people were second class citizens”, Arundhati said.

“For queer folk in all post-colonial countries, the governments have to understand that these (anti-sodomy) were not our laws,” said Menaka.

Recalling the final day when the SC finally repealed section 377, both Arundhati and Menaka said that they were extremely happy and so were their parents who visited the court to watch their daughters in action. They also celebrated the victory together.

Arundhati also recently took part in the viral Saree Twitter and shared a picture with her partner Menaka. The picture amassed several reactions with people congratulating the couple.

The duo’s video interview with CNN is going viral on social media. People have come up to congratulate the couple.

https://twitter.com/Iam73148688/status/1151848010571112451

Speaking of their achievements, the power couple Arundhati and Menaka scored a spot on TIME magazine’s list of 100 most influential people of 2019.

Kudos to the duo!

📣 Storypick is now on Telegram! Click here to join our channel (@storypick) and never miss another great story.