Delhi Pride 2008 (photo: Sonali Gulati for Wockner News)
Veteran reporter Rex Wockner has posted an update to his original article on the decriminalization of gay sex in India. Yesterday, a good number of outlets around the vast internets claimed the High Court’s decision only applied in Delhi. Not so, says Wockner.
From Rex Wockner’s blog:
I also got on the phone tonight with Vikram Doctor of India’s Queer Media Collective. Vikram said: “Every major media outlet in the world got this wrong because they don’t understand how the Indian courts work. It will apply nationally until somebody challenges that at the Supreme Court, which is where this case is going to end up anyway.”
My indispensable factchecker guy, Bill Kelley, who also happens to be a lawyer, says that most common-law courts work thusly: “The decision of an appellate court binds lower courts within its territorial jurisdiction but also (a) it acts as the ‘last’ word on the subject nationally unless a court of equal authority elsewhere makes a contrary decision or the supreme court reverses the decision and (b) it binds the parties to the case (e.g., the Government of India) regardless of where they may ‘go’ within the country. For these two reasons, the Delhi High Court decision appears to have nationwide application.”
There is a whole lot more to read and pix to peruse at Rex’s blog.
Why is this court’s decision so important? According to Rex:
India is the world’s second-most-populous nation: 17.22 percent of all humans live there. That’s 1,165,760,000 people.
Now assuming, for instance, that 5% of the population of India were of the homosex orientation. That would mean that 58,288,000 human beings no longer have to worry about spending ten years in prison for the crime of following their hearts. That is pretty damn significant.
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