Gay marriage has been quite the topic of debate here in the United States for decades and is a pivotal movement in the human rights campaign. While the rights and laws regarding the LGBT community here in the United States have been seen as extremely unlawful and unjust to many Americans, multiple countries are far behind when it concerns these basic human rights. Countries such as India, Uganda, and Russia have straight out banned homosexuality and consider the act of it an actual crime.
In December of last year, the Indian supreme court overturned a 2009 Delhi High Court judgement decriminalizing homosexuality. Less than one week ago there were multiple petitions from the government and gay rights activists to review the decision, but they were rejected by the supreme court. They stated that only Parliament had the ability to change section 377, a law that dates back to India’s colonial era, banning gay sex as “unnatural”. The court deemed that it was unconstitutional to strike down the law, as it was lawmakers decisions to do so. The deeply religiously rooted and conservative government set the punishment for gay sex up to a whole ten years in prison.
With this law still in effect and growing opposition to homosexuality only worsening in places such as Uganda and Russia, what can the average American do to promote the movement and hopefully bring about some change across the world? Well, to begin with I believe we can start by changing how our country views homosexuality as a whole, by voting and speaking to local politicians about changing the bans on homosexual marriage.
Florida itself has made a huge leap forward by having six same-sex couples sue the state because of the state’s refusal to grant them marriage licenses. With the rest of the world looking at how homosexuality is not a big deal at all and just a natural part of life here in the United States, hopefully we’ll be able to bring about a bigger change across the world.
