Marriage and Kinship @current affairs
Table of Contents
What Same-Sex Parenting Does to
Kinship
Homosexuality and
Relationships with Biological Relatives
Same-Sex Parenting,
Biologism and Filiation
An Historical Break
in the Kinship System?
The
Unanswered Question of Same-Sex Marriages in India
LGBT+ marriage: To secure equality in civil rights,
family law must also be reformed
Rent-a-bike facility in Kerala:
What Same-Sex
Parenting Does to Kinship
What
are the effects of same-sex parenting on the kinship system of Western
societies? A collection of international papers edited by two anthropologists
of kinship lead them to reject the thesis of an anthropological break or the
claim that the current kinship system has been disrupted. Instead, they
emphasize the centrality of multiple parenting.
Reviewed: Jérôme Courduriès and Agnès Fine (ed.), Homosexualité et parenté, Paris, Armand Colin, coll.
Sociétales, 2014, 230 p., 24, 50 €.
In Western societies, homosexuality has, in a decade or two,
emerged from its marginal and clandestine status and entered the public sphere.
Even if it has not been unanimously recognized as merely one sexual orientation
among others, it has henceforth become more widely accepted. Legal mechanisms
regulating the shared lives of same-sex couples have been established,
including, to speak only of France, the PACS (pacte
civil de solidarité, or civil solidarity
pact, created in 1999) and same-sex marriage (2013). While in recent years
there has been more and more research on homosexuality, much of it explores
relationships, sexuality, access to parenthood, and lifestyle. Few studies
analyze kinship itself, asking whether homosexuality transforms—and if so, to
what extent—the kinship system existing in European and American societies,
despite the fact that this question has, at the same moment, triggered vigorous
ideological debates within society. The book under review, edited by two
anthropologists, Jérôme Courduriès and Agnès Fine, and which originated with a
conference held in Toulouse in December 2011, adopts precisely this
perspective. Over ten chapters, sixteen anthropologists and sociologists
present the results of their research. Two questions emerge: what is the
relationship between gays and lesbians and their biological relatives,
specifically their immediate family members (i.e., father, mother, and siblings)?
And does the access of same-sex couples to parenthood change the nature of
kinship? Though it makes no claim to address these questions exhaustively, the
book has the advantage of considering the matter from an international
perspective: in addition to France, the essays deal with Belgium, Spain,
Switzerland, the United States, and Brazil.
Homosexuality and Relationships with Biological Relatives
Addressing the first question, Courduriès demonstrates that,
increased tolerance notwithstanding, some families continue to reject
homosexuality at a visceral level when it concerns their own children. Having
studied young people who were forced out of their homes due to their sexual
orientation, he calls attention to the violent nature of parental reactions:
exclusion from the family is often, for instance, preceded by a period of
sequestration aimed at hiding the “shame” experienced by fathers and mothers.
For young gays and lesbians rejected in this way, brothers and sisters are most
often allies, but in some circumstances they are, on the contrary, “their
parents’ accomplices” (p. 58). Often, fathers and mothers have to “come out” as
parents of homosexual children. They may also do so when the latter enter into
a relationship. Wilfried Rault, who is interested in how PACS ceremonies are celebrated, shows how these rituals reveal
the ambivalence of intergenerational relationships. Though an ideal of peaceful
relations prevails, they are generally rather tense. Consequently, biological
relatives tend to be sidelined and, ultimately, to be confined to secondary
roles, while pride of place is given to the couple’s peers. Sometimes separate
ceremonies are held, with friends and relatives each having their own services
at different times.
SOME FAMILIES CONTINUE TO REJECT HOMOSEXUALITY AT A VISCERAL LEVEL WHEN IT
CONCERNS THEIR OWN CHILDREN
From the standpoint of intergenerational relationships, the
situations in Brazil and Spain seem rather different. In societies where mutual
aid between family members is crucial and widespread, a child’s homosexuality
presents no obstacle to relationships of support and exchange between family
members. Contrary to Kath Weston’s description (1991) of the homosexual scene
in California in the 1980s, networks among friends do not fill the void left by
the retreat of family members. Mutual assistance between biological relatives
is too valuable for homosexuals—or their kin, for that matter—to relinquish it.
In Spain, material and financial exchanges exist that offset homophobic
attitudes and promote the de facto integration of young gays and lesbians
(see José Ignacio Pichardo Galàn’s essay). In Brazil, incidences of
intergenerational cohabitation are not uncommon: fathers and mothers will allow
their child and his or her partner to live with them for a period of time. In
return, they receive financial assistance, in which the family conforms to a
practice that is very widespread (see the article by Claudia Regina Nichnig and
Miriam Pillar Grossi). Flávio Luiz Tarnovski calls attention to the role played
in Brazil by “gay uncles.” The latter are single homosexual men who are deeply
immersed in mutual aid relationships with their relatives. This practice can be
seen as a reinterpretation of a traditional role that can often extend to
raising a brother’s or sister’s child, following the model, which is well known
to anthropologists, of fosterage or “Brazilian-style adoptions.” In these
cases, the uncle recognizes the child as his own, which is illegal yet
widespread among working-class populations. This highly original form of
homosexual access to parenthood is only conceivable in a society in which the
“circulation of children” is common.
As Céline Costechareire
emphasizes in a study of French lesbians living as couples, parental attitudes
have a profound effect on the homosexual experience, including lifestyle,
relationships with the homosexual community, and identity. Yet these effects
are in no way mechanical, since additional factors may intervene—notably
pervasive homophobia, which, depending on one’s social milieu and family
situation, can be more or less strong, and the unevenly distributed ability to
detach oneself from it. In working-class milieus, a combination of such factors
often leads to self-deprecation and social isolation, with family hostility
exacerbating this stigmatization. Circles of friends play a crucial role, both
because of the sheer fact that they exist and because of the way in which they
are constituted (homogeneous or mixed, from the standpoint of sexual
orientation). They can also offset the effects of familial exclusion.
Same-Sex Parenting, Biologism and Filiation
The most striking factor
in gay and lesbian access to parenthood and its implications for the kinship
system is the power of “biologism”—that is, beliefs pertaining to the
biological dimension of the bond of filiation. Becoming a parent is a decisive
step in affirming one’s sexual orientation vis-à-vis one’s father and mother.
At this stage, hiding ceases to be an option and relatives have no choice but
to yield to obvious facts. Martine Gross has analyzed the impact on families of
the French gay community’s recourse to surrogacy. If the announcement of a plan
to have children is most often disturbing for the partners’ fathers and
mothers, the situation normalizes itself at the birth of the child. Fathers and
mothers are delighted to become grandparents, and their own children’s
homosexuality becomes a secondary concern. Gay couples who opt for surrogacy,
despite its economic and social costs (in France, the practice is illegal), do
so in order to become “full-time fathers” (p. 160), a possibility afforded
neither by adoption (in which only the member of the couple who is formally
adopting the child is recognized as the father), nor by shared parenting (in
which a gay couple must arrange for the presence of a woman, who gives birth to
the child and is its legal mother, whether or not she herself belongs to a
couple). On several occasions, Gross emphasizes the importance of the belief in
the transmission of biogenetic characteristics for creating a sense of
paternity. The rhetoric of resemblance is very present in these situations:
resemblance (both physical and psychological) and biological connection
mutually reinforce one another, following a circular logic in which the former
is the sign of the latter, in ways that strengthen the belief in parenthood’s
biogenetic basis. Some couples, convinced of the symbolic power of the
biogenetic bond and its effects on affiliation as it relates to both lines to
which the soon-to-be-born child will belong, refuse to allow it any role in
defining fatherhood: they mix their embryos together, which are then inserted
into the surrogate’s uterus, so that each can fully feel like he is the father
and their close relatives remain ignorant of the biological father’s true
identity. Having the sister of the man who is not the child’s biological father
make a gift of her oocytes is another way of manipulating genetic materials to
place the kinship bonds between the gay couple, their respective lineages, and
the child on a biological and hence irrefutable basis.
Access to gay fatherhood
in the United States, as studied by Ellen Lewin, once again demonstrates the
potency of references to biology and resemblance in establishing a family. This
explains why, among other reasons, American gays prefer surrogacy, particularly
since the public adoption system only makes them eligible for children who are
reputed to be “difficult,” whom married heterosexual couples tend to avoid. In
a social context characterized by the “commercialization of reproduction” (p.
140), with some gay couples spending up to $100,000 per pregnancy, becoming
parents is, for many homosexuals, a way of no longer being gay—in other words,
of leaving behind a “gay world” that is deemed frivolous and futile, thus
ensuring greater familial and social integration.
The final two essays
deal more specifically with situations of shared parenting, i.e., when a
same-sex couple raises a child that one of them had with a third party, whether
the latter also belongs to a couple or not. Generally speaking, both couples
share responsibility for the child. From the standpoint of the law, only the
child’s biological parents count as its true parents, while their respective
partners find themselves in the fragile position of being noncustodial parents.
Drawing on a study undertaken in French-speaking Switzerland, Claire Ansermet,
Yazid Ben Hounet, Pascal-Eric Gaberel, and Marianne Modak show how
uncomfortable the status of noncustodial parent can be in situations of shared
parenting: because they are not recognized by the law, such parents often find
themselves “anxious about losing their children” (p. 198), notably if the
couple breaks up. A sword of Damocles constantly hangs over their heads, for
the agreements made in the event of break-up (who has custody of the child,
child support, and so on) have no legal standing and are entirely contingent
upon the legal parents’ good will. The parent-child bond is, as a result,
significantly weakened. The conclusion of such analyses is that it is difficult
to make multiple parenting function in daily life: in some of the shared
parenting systems developed by same-sex couples, one finds a kind of structural
rivalry between the father and the biological mother’s partner that often leads
to conflict. Of course, similar rivalry can be found in other multiple parent
situations, such as in the case of blended heterosexual families, where it often
occurs between the father and stepfather. But in the case of same-sex multiple
parenting, the rivalry is exacerbated by the fact that the noncustodial parent
is a woman rather than a man, and, moreover, the partner of the child’s mother
since the inception of the family project: there is, consequently, a greater
likelihood that she would care for the child and step on his prerogatives as
father.
The fragile status of
the noncustodial parent also extends to the grandparents’ generation, as Cathy
Herbrand shows in a Belgium-based study. Fathers and mothers of the
noncustodial parent are less likely to think of themselves as grandparents than
those who base their relationship with their grandchildren on biogenetic and
legal bonds. The ideal of consanguinity is so deeply rooted that it leads
“social grandparents” (p. 183) to make distinctions between their grandchildren
even when they accept their child’s homosexuality and shared parenting plan:
for instance, the child of a son’s or daughter’s partner is not fully
integrated into the kinship system. Weaker integration impacts the parental
couple, as the noncustodial parent feels that his or her parental status is not
recognized. As Courduriès and Fine observe in their introduction, noncustodial
parents and social grandparents are seen as allies rather than blood relatives,
and therefore occupy a peripheral space within the family. It thus seems that
multiple parenting rarely leads to complex filiation—i.e., filiation consisting
of more than two lines. Unquestionably, biologistic beliefs are difficult to
let go.
An Historical Break in the Kinship System?
THE PLURALITY OF BELIEFS PERTAINING TO KINSHIP DESTROYS THE FICTION OF A
NATURALISTIC, TRANSCENDENT, AND UNIVERSALISTIC FAMILY
In their remarkable introductory essay (consisting of nearly
thirty solidly argued pages), the editors do much more than present an overview
of the various contributions. They put the findings in perspective, discussing
them, identifying new paths that require further exploration (the weight of
national particularities, the influence of religious belief, the asymmetry
between men and women in the reproductive process, and so on). They also pose a
question that is essential to the analysis of kinship: do homosexual
conjugality and same-sex parenting represent an anthropological break in the
European and American kinship system? Their answer is “no,” and is thus in
disagreement on this point with the way in which Anne Cadoret (2002)—one of the
first anthropologists to become interested in same-sex parenting—uses the term
“homosexual filiation” (homoparenté).
This term implies, they argue, that lesbian and gay access to parenthood has
introduced a specific form of kinship. For Courduriès and Fine, however, the
real novelty lies in multiple parenting, which is not unique to homoparental
families, as one also finds it in the blended families of heterosexual couples.
The question is determining how one should handle these “extra parents” in a
kinship system based on exclusive bilateralism, which, in turn, is reinforced
by a “spontaneous biologism” (to use Francis Zimmermann’s term [1993]) that
equates parenthood with biological parenthood). Thus Courduriès and Fine
conclude: “If an anthropological break has occurred, it seems, in our view,
tied not to homosexuality and same-sex parenting but to the role of multiple
living adults in bringing into the world and educating the same child” (p. 36).
This is a bold thesis, reiterating the argument that Fine (2013)
made the previous year in an aptly titled article: “To Have Two Fathers or Two
Mothers: Revolution or Revelation in the Meaning of Filiation?” Its great merit
is to have resituated the questions of homosexuality and same-sex parenting
within recent and more general kinship trends that are unique to Western
societies. Similarities do indeed exist with blended families, some adoptive
families, and couples with children that resorted to assisted reproduction,
such as gamete donation or surrogacy: all of these situations raise the
question of the role of third parties, which make it necessary in some cases,
particularly when the third party participates in the child’s education, to
conceive of parenthood pluralistically. Yet besides the fact that the argument
attributed to Cadoret is one that she has not defended since her 2002
book Des parents comme les autres (“Parents like any Other”) and that the term “homosexual
filiation” (homoparenté)
is in fact the title of an essay by Jean-Pierre Winter (2010), a French
psychoanalyst noted for his hostility to same-sex parenting, the claim that
homosexuality and same-sex parenting have as such had no significant effect on
kinship is debatable, if not reductive. The findings presented in the various
contributions to this book add some nuance to this claim. One can see that in
the current state of our kinship system, as well as the beliefs and rules that
sustain it, homoparental pairings—to speak only of couples, leaving out shared
parenting arrangements—are not self-evident: the self-deprecation many
homosexuals feel when they face significant hostility from close relatives
makes access to parenthood difficult in psychological terms; biologistic
beliefs leave little space for social parents (i.e., the partners of biological
fathers or mothers)—who are also typically noncustodial parents, recognized
neither by the law nor by the institutions—and their lines; and, despite the
“family effect” produced by the birth of a child, the inclusion of homoparental
couples within networks of relatives remains fragile and limited, except in
societies in which the practice of familial mutual assistance is a vital
necessity or a deeply rooted cultural trait. It would thus seem that multiple
parenting is not the sole factor. From our point of view, the real problem lies
in the spontaneous biologism that still underpins most beliefs relating to
kinship: the reluctance to accept multiple parenting is only one instance of
this problem, and surely not the only one. The fact that almost all same-sex
parents must negotiate with the ideal of consanguinity, often at their own
initiative and sometimes unconsciously, is proof that homosexuality’s challenge
to the European and American kinship system can only be addressed by
relativizing spontaneously biological representations of kinship bonds—a task
that is both difficult to achieve and, regrettably, frequently misunderstood by
society and families.
In conclusion, we should note that Ellen Lewin was right to
observe in 1993, when discussing Kath Weston’s Families
We Choose (1991), that gay
and lesbian studies represented an important turning point in the analysis of
kinship, comparable to the turn in the 1980s towards feminist history and
anthropology. Its great advantage is to have revealed the kinds of belief that underpin
the kinship system and the tensions that emerge in this realm between different
ontologies of kinship. The plurality of beliefs pertaining to kinship destroys
the fiction of a naturalistic, transcendent, and universalistic family. Kinship
thus becomes a political question, which Courduriès’ and Fine’s volume helps us
to conceptualize. This book is unquestionably a major event in the
French-speaking world and represents a landmark in the literature.
The Unanswered Question
of Same-Sex Marriages in India
OCTOBER 9,
2020 11:30:20 PM
Edited by: Khushali Mahajan
| Rajiv Gandhi National U. of Law, IN
Paras Sharma, a penultimate year law student at Panjab
University, India, analyses the contemporary status of same-sex marriage in
India...
Around two
years back, the Hon’ble Supreme Court of India in its historical judgement
of Navtej Singh Johar v. Union of India decriminalised
homosexuality in the country. However, despite this progressive judgement,
certain questions incidental to the homosexual relationships remained
unaddressed by both the Apex Court and the Government. One such question
pertains to ‘same-sex marriages’. India does not recognise same-sex marriages.
None of the marital laws expressly recognise same-sex marriages. Recently, a
Public Interest Litigation (“PIL”) was filed in the High Court of Delhi
seeking declaration to the marriage rights of the gay community under the Hindu Marriage Act, 1955 (“the Act”). The petitioner avers that the Act
allows marriages between “two Hindus” without any discrimination between
heterosexual and homosexual couples. It is nowhere mentioned under Section
5 of the Act, laying conditions of a valid Hindu
marriage, that a marriage must be solemnised between ‘only’ a man and a woman.
But still, gay couples can’t get married and register the same under the Act.
The law of
the land sees members of the LGBTQ+ community only as ‘individuals’ and not as
‘couples’, due to which, homosexual couples have to suppress their feelings of
getting married to a partner of their choice. One of the major reasons that
homosexuality is still not accepted as ‘normal’ in India is because it lacks a
‘stamp of marriage’. It is just exactly how live-in relationships turn from
‘anti-social’ to ‘social’ when the partners get married. Marriage is a
sacrosanct institution in India. Depriving the LGBTQ+ community of the right to
get married solely on the basis of sexual orientation and gender identity is
absolutely discriminatory and against the gist of (“the Constitution”).
Countries
around the world have legalised same-sex marriages. The world is heading
towards progressive LGBTQ+ rights, but the government of India doesn’t seem to
be in the mood for leaving the clutches of orthodoxy and conservatism, despite
the 2018 verdict. Opposing the petition, the Union Government through its Solicitor General stated
that “Our (Indian) legal system, society, and values do not recognise same-sex
marriages.” He further contended that “the 2018 judgement merely decriminalises
homosexuality or lesbianism, nothing more nothing less.”
Such rigid
adherence to the archaic values and principles, depriving the sacrosanct right
to get married to a partner of one’s choice, is strictly against the gist
of right to life and personal liberty guaranteed by the Constitution under Article 21. The
petition is yet to be heard next in October, but the response of the Union
Government has somewhere highlighted its perception on the rights of the LGBTQ+
community. It is for this rudimentary mindset of those in power, that members
of the LGBTQ+ community are still treated as a second class of citizens.
Same-sex
marriages are not a new phenomenon in India. Homosexuality has an ancient
history in India. The history of homosexuality can be traced to the Rig-Veda,
which dates around 1500 BC. The ‘Kamasutra’ also describes the Harems of
young boys kept by Hindu aristocrats and Muslim Nawabs. However, with the
advent of Brahmanism and later British Colonialism, these experiences stated to
be seen as a matter of hatred. The Aryan invasion began to supress
homosexuality as they kindled the dominance of patriarchy. Homosexuals were
punished, beaten, and subjected to various physical and mental tortures. This
eventually gave birth to homophobia which, with time, changed it forms. From
there, homosexuality started to lose its roots.
Lack of
recognition does not mean that same-sex marriages have not happened in India.
In 1987, a marriage occurred where two policewomen married each other with
Hindu rituals. The denial of the right to marry the partner of one’s choice is
absolutely unjust.
Hindu
scriptures define marriage as the union of ‘two souls’ and the same scriptures
also define that a soul has no gender. It is only the human bodies that possess a gender. These
scriptures are a major source of Hindu Law including the Act. The Act merely
codifies the Hindu law and doesn’t try to erode the values imbibed within the
Holy Scriptures.
The debate
over same-sex marriages is more of morality than on law. People try to
establish a line of distinction between the ‘societal norms’ and ‘individual
liberty’ especially in the culture where religion enjoys more prominence. The
law on same-sex marriages in India is already indirectly established by the
apex court. In March 2018, the Supreme Court of India has held that an adult
has a fundamental right to marry a person of their own choice. The collective
reading of this case with Navtej Singh Johar (September
2018) can be taken as a tacit recognition of same-sex marriage. Further in
2019, The High Court of Madras decreed and allowed the marriage under the Act.
However,
the matter lacks clarity as different High Courts have taken different views on
the issue. For instance the High Court of Delhi, after three months of the
Madras High Court verdict had seeking an amendment in the Act to include
same-sex marriages within its ambit. The Court held that the matter is one
‘parliament kind’ and not of the ‘court kind’.
However,
the reply of the Government in the instant PIL filed in Delhi HC, in some way
or the other, throws light on its reluctance to give a statutory effect to
same-sex marriages. Even the Human
Rights Charter [Article 16] recognises the
‘right to marry’ as a universal right. Seeking this right to extend to
homosexual couples as well is neither too complicated nor unjust. Not allowing
the LGBTQ+ community as per their own choice is just like saying ‘you are
different and there is no one to marry you in this country; forget about the
person you love’.
We must
not forget that it was the blind inclination towards values, beliefs, and
traditions of the noble men in the Court of Dhritrashtra that
lead to the drastic war of Mahabharata. Just as still water starts to stink
with time; still rituals, customs, traditions, values and beliefs start to
stink the society. Change is the law nature. This is the right time to
introduce the change in India vis-à-vis same sex marriages.
If the law
of the country can recognise ‘love of two souls irrespective of gender’ why
can’t it recognise their marriage as well? What makes life meaningful is love.
The right that makes us human is the right to love. If it is not allowed to
bind this love into a knot of marriage, then such love will always remain
incomplete and society will never accept it. India’s Constitution is ready for
same-sex marriages but there is a strong need to make people and the society
leave the rudimentary shackles of so-called ‘values and culture’ and acclimate
to the change flowing in nature.
Paras Sharma is penultimate year law student at Panjab
University, Chandigarh, India.
LGBT+ marriage: To secure equality in civil rights, family law must also be reformed
The discourse must shift beyond marriage to
account for all aspects of state regulation of the family.
The recent comments of
the Solicitor General about the unacceptability of marriage-equality in
Indian culture in court proceedings challenging Hindu marriage law attracted
great controversy. Unfortunately, the comments distract from the substance of
the challenge and need to contextualise it in Indian family law.
Since
the decriminalisation of same-sex relationships in 2018, there has been much
debate about the future of LGBT+ rights in India. This was natural since the
Supreme Court while reading down Section 377 of the Indian Penal Code had held
that LGBT+ Indians would be entitled to equal constitutional citizenship,
thereby hinting at the future expansion of civil rights.
Developments
since, however, have not been promising. The Parliament passed the Transgender
Persons (Protection of Rights) Act, 2019, amidst much resistance from the
community for disregarding the lived experiences of transgender persons in
framing the law and for diluting their right to self-identification. Moreover,
while discrimination on grounds of sexual orientation and gender identity is
constitutionally impermissible, limited to no efforts have been made to
translate these rights into enforceable law.
The marriage question
In this context, some
members of the LGBT+ community recently approached the High Court of Delhi in a
public interest litigation asking for the recognition of same-sex marriage
under the Hindu Marriage Act. This was not the first such challenge, with a gay
couple having approached the High Court of Kerala for the recognition of their
marriage under the secular Special Marriage Act earlier this year.
Both
legislations currently only recognise heterosexual marriages ie marriages
within the male-female binary and therefore exclude marriages outside this
binary. In recent times while many high courts, by recognising the right to
choose a partner, have extended protection to same-sex live-in couples wanting
to live with each other, family law frameworks do not recognise such
relationships.
Last
year the Madras High Court did recognise a marriage between a transwoman and a
man under the Hindu Marriage Act arguing that such a marriage would be valid
since the transgender person identified as a woman. This reasoning, however,
would only be limited to instances where the couple identifies within the
binary of male and female. Petitioners before both the High Courts of Delhi and
Kerala have now argued that by limiting legal recognition to heterosexual
couples, the Hindu Marriage Act and the Special Marriage Act discriminate
against LGBT+ persons and disregard their fundamental rights.
There
is a strong case to be made for such an argument since the Supreme Court in its
pronouncements, on transgender rights and decriminalisation of same-sex
relationships, has also given affirmative recognition to LGBT+ person’s
fundamental rights to equality and dignity.
Complexity of family law
However, family laws in
India represent a far more complex category of laws and the mere recognition of
same-sex marriage through a judicial challenge to specific provisions may only
translate to limited gains for the community.
Family
laws cannot be viewed in terms of marriage rights only. A host of other issues
such as succession, parenthood, economic dependency and protection from
intimate partner violence become relevant in the context of the state
regulation of the family. In India, marriage often becomes an entry point to
such rights since the vision of marriage remains central to family law.
Currently,
statutory frameworks dealing with succession, parenthood and related matters
operate in the male-female binary and assume the heterosexual family as the
normative standard. Therefore, even if specific provisions of marriage laws
such as the Hindu Marriage Act were to be declared unconstitutional or were to
be read to include same-sex marriages, provisions of various other statutory
laws would continue to exclude same-sex relationships thereby denying them
broader civil rights.
For
instance, provisions of the Hindu Succession Act would exclude same-gender
spouses since it is premised on the patriarchal Hindu undivided family while
laws regulating parenthood such as the Hindu Minority and Guardianship Act
would only account for the heteronormative family in determining the
guardianship of minors.
Even
if one were to base marriage rights in secular legislations such as the Special
Marriage Act aspects of religion-based personal laws would continue to be
relevant. This is because the secular and religion-based personal law regimes
in India remain highly interconnected with aspects of personal law continuing
to apply even if individuals opt for a secular law. Therefore, two Hindus
marrying under the Special Marriage Act would continue to be governed by
provisions of the Hindu Succession Act in matters of succession and other
similar religion-based personal laws in matters of parenthood and so on.
Moreover,
many provisions of these legislations such as the process of solemnisation of
marriage, grounds for divorce, maintenance, and remedies such as restitution of
conjugal rights represent, arguably outdated, heterosexual assumptions that may
not be easily translatable to same-sex relationships. Many of these frameworks
may thus be ill-suited to LGBT+ families in India.
Going beyond marriage
To truly realise the civil
rights of LGBT+ persons, the discourse must therefore shift beyond marriage to
account for all aspects of state regulation of the family such as succession,
parenthood, economic dependency and protection from violence in intimate
relationships. This needs to happen both during discussions on family law
reform at the community level as well as should get reflected in litigation and
law reform strategies.
Viewing
marriage as the sole objective of legal reform disregards other intrinsic
aspects of family law which are necessary for legal inclusion to be effective.
Going beyond marriage equality is therefore necessary to make marriage equality
work in practice.
Akshat Agarwal is a Research Fellow at the Vidhi Centre for Legal
Policy. Views expressed are personal.
Rent-a-bike facility in Kerala:
1.
To
be introduced by Indian Railways.
- It will be introduced in 15 key
railway stations under the Thiruvananthapuram railway division to ensure
last mile connectivity and seamless travel to train commuters.
1.
Also
known as Himalayan red bear, isabelline bear or Dzu-Teh.
- It is the largest carnivore
in the highlands of Himalayas.
- It is found in 23 protected areas
including Himachal Pradesh, Uttaranchal and Jammu and Kashmir.
IUCN
Status:
While
the brown bear as a species is classified as Least Concern by
the IUCN, this subspecies is highly endangered and populations are
dwindling. It is Endangered in the Himalayas and Critically Endangered
in Hindu Kush.
Why
in News?
A
recent study on the Himalayan brown bear has predicted a significant
reduction in suitable habitat and biological corridors of the species
due to climate change, prompting scientists to suggest an adaptive spatial
planning of the protected area network in the western Himalayas for conserving
the species.
1.
Launched
by PM Modi recently in Gujarat.
- Aimed at providing day-time
electricity to farmers in the State for irrigation and farming.
1.
Lord Dattatreya performed penance at the top of the
hill.
- Also a kshetra where 22nd
Tirthankar Lord Neminath attained Nirvana.
- Located near Junagadh in Junagadh
district, Gujarat.
Why
in News?
A
2.3-km-long ropeway project was recently launched by PM Modi on Mount Girnar in
Junagadh city.
1.
The
ropeway project is being touted as the longest temple ropeway in Asia.
- The ropeway has been developed
by Usha Breco Limited at an investment of ₹130 crore.
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