India decriminalizes homosexual sex

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I wonder when arranged gay marriages will start.

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Interesting. Didn't know there was a court case underway.

Didn't know the Indian SC was in the habit of delivering rulings of that type, either.

Is there anything equivalent to ballot initiatives in India? As far as I know there is none. I ask because I wonder how gay marriage would be legalized in the future. I would think the SC would have to make the decision? Also marriage laws vary by religion in India so that should be...interesting.

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Now sort out the caste system.

In the legal system? There are no laws that discriminate against lower caste people and on the other hand they get a lot of benefit in terms of reserved government jobs, college seats etc. Changing the attitude of people is what is needed and that is a much more complicated task (though closely related with increasing education levels). Also note that this is just a court ruling and its not as if the population got any less homophobic. Rather there could be a backlash.....

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The Muslims will sure be pleased about this.

Some Imam already condemned this. But to be fair so did the highest Catholic official in India.

http://publication.samachar.com/pub_article.php?id=4582534&navname=General%20&moreurl=http://publication.samachar.com/ndtv/general/ndtv.php&homeurl=http://publication.samachar.com&nextids=4584745

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Interesting. Didn't know there was a court case underway.

Didn't know the Indian SC was in the habit of delivering rulings of that type, either.

Is there anything equivalent to ballot initiatives in India? As far as I know there is none. I ask because I wonder how gay marriage would be legalized in the future. I would think the SC would have to make the decision? Also marriage laws vary by religion in India so that should be...interesting.

I suspect gay marriage in India would be brought down extremely brutally in India.

Yes that might be the case in today's society. But say 20 years from now I wonder how gay marriage would be legalized exactly. I am guessing it would be through the court system, but India has separate family law for different religions so I am not sure how that would work it. It could even be the case that Christians and Jews, who are extremely urbanized and liberal, could have gay marriage before Hindus and especially Muslims. Not sure if that's how it would work though.

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Isn't family law for Hindus theoretically based on a British-created Civil Code (except frequently ignored - minimum marriage age according to the thing is 18 which in many districts is actually higher than the median age of girls at marriage; polygamy is illegal but persists in some regions among some communities - and never existed in the first place most everywhere else, etc) while Muslims and Christians can basically use their religious laws (with a few exceptions)?
If so, one would expect Hindu gay marriage to be legal before Christian gay marriage.

Anyways, I wonder which side pays the dowry in an arranged gay marriage.

So according to Hindu family law (although it is called the hindu family law, it is more or less secular and applies to Hindus, Sikhs, Buddhists, Animists and anyone else with an indigenous belief system) any couple that is married according to tradition and completes the Saptapadi (seven steps or rounds around the fire). So any priest that agrees to a gay marriage and completes the right rituals will have performed a legal marriage. This has already happened in the case of Californian couples that wanted a traditional ceremony in addition to the license from the state. Based on the law it seems to me that the supreme court should rule these marriages as legal but probably won't due to the "greater public good" or some BS like that. Anyways marriage does not confer onto you benefits unlike here in America so many people in India don't even bother to register their marriages and thus gay marriage may not be as big as of an issue there as it would be here.
http://www.salon.com/opinion/feature/2008/05/30/arranged_gay_marriage/

Also the catcher would pay the dowry, duh.