An Indian same-sex couple walk outside their home with their adopted children in Bengaluru on Feb. 11. The Supreme Court of India last week completed a ten-day-long hearing on a clutch of petitions seeking official recognition of same-sex unions but reserved its judgment on whether the Indian state legally should recognize same-sex marriages or not. (Photo: AFP)
May 24 2023
INDIA – There has been a considerable shift in attitude regarding same-sex marriage in India since the country de-criminalized consensual sex between two people of the same sex in 2009.
With the decriminalization of homosexuality, there should be no place for hatred or other forms of rejection of those who experience same-sex attraction or identify themselves as gay, lesbian, or bisexual. However, Indian societies, cutting across religious and regional lines, consider same-sex marriage an aberration.
The contentious issue has once again become the topic of heated discussions as India’s Supreme Court is hearing a set of petitions seeking legal recognition of same same-sex marriages. The federal government and religious leaders, including Christian bishops, have already rejected the idea of legally allowing same-sex couples to marry.
The top court last week completed a ten-day-long hearing on the issue but reserved its judgment on whether the Indian state legally should recognize same-sex marriages or not.
Christians, cutting across denominational lines, oppose same-sex marriage maintaining that it’s against the God-ordained natural order of procreation. Procreation and family are important concepts not just in the Christian belief system, but also in the cultural ethos of Indian social systems.
The Bible established (Genesis 2:18) that marriage is sacred to God. He decided that it’s not right for a man to be alone and therefore He’ll make a helper suitable for him. Therefore God created Adam and Eve — man and woman — with the sole purpose of procreation and family formation through heterosexual relationships.
“Everyone, including a minor innocent child, who could be adopted by a same-sex couple, also has constitutional rights”
The creator established rules governing marriage long before governments and the judiciary began regulating the institution of marriage. Modern secular psychology also recognizes that men and women are psychologically and emotionally designed to complement each other. The demand for legal recognition of same-sex marriage, though objectionable as it is not compatible with the order of nature, has yet sadly found acceptance in the post-modern age and times. Same-sex marriage is a perversion of the institution of marriage and will eventually destroy the family, and in the long run, will render society dysfunctional.
Same-sex couples are fully entitled to their rights and privileges as enshrined in the constitution. However, everyone, including a minor innocent child, who could be adopted by a same-sex couple, also has constitutional rights.
A legal marriage also will establish the right of same-sex couples to adopt minor children or even babies, who have not reached the age of consent. Such adoption by a same-sex couple is obviously detrimental to the personality development and overall mental wellness of the adopted child, who is still malleable.
The Delhi Commission for Protection of Child Rights supported the recognition of same-sex marriage in an intervention application that was meant to help the court understand the impact of such marriages on children. While on the other hand, the National Commission for Protection of Child Rights has claimed that the right to equality does not mean equating unequal, and homosexual couples are in a different category than heterosexual couples for the purpose of having children and strongly maintained that same-sex couples should not enjoy the right to adopt children.
The main challenge here is to have a mechanism to ensure the rights of the third party — the minor who will be brought into the union of the same-sex marriage, without his or her consent. Allowing same-sex couples to adopt children will pervert the orientation of children because they need both parents to grow up in order to become functional adults. It will not be possible for an already dysfunctional household of same-sex parents to raise children with normal psychological stability.
It’s flattering and hypocritical that the very advocates of same-sex marriage rights have been brought up and raised in normal and functional households. Yet, they want to pervert and destroy the very structure that has enabled them with a normal personality and psychological stability.
There are also other questions. Why do same-sex couples want to adopt children, who are born out of a heterosexual relationship? Why do they see it as their fundamental right to adopt and put at risk the creation of God-ordained heterosexual couples? Trying to defend an aberration of this magnitude by raising voices is the flimsiest defense of defending the indefensible.
The beneficiaries of a functional society and heterosexual households should not use the very process of a functional society — the legal system — to entrench dysfunctionality. The wrong use of the judicial process to disrupt the divine order established for the functionality of human society amounts to usurping and wresting control from the Almighty God.
This is a genuine cause of concern which should be addressed with the utmost urgency that it deserves. It begs for sanity and right thinking to prevail to prevent posterity from falling into the abyss of chaos.
Dr. Abraham Mathai, a former member of the Minority Commission of Maharashtra state, is a Christian leader and rights activist based in Mumbai. The views expressed in this article are those of the author and do not necessarily reflect the official editorial position of UCA News. – UCA News
