DMK's regional ally leader faces backlash over same-sex love remark, apologises

Viduthalai Chiruthaigal Katchi (VCK) leader and Chidambaram MP Thol Thirumavalavan apologised to the LGBTQIA+ community for his insensitive comment on same-sex relationships.

A video of Thol Thirumavalavan surfaced recently, showing him calling same-sex love a “perversion” during a student event at Coimbatore Agricultural University. The remark, made on April 12, at the ‘Let Us Learn Democracy and Student Parliament 2025’, was in response to a law student's question on whether same-sex love fits within Tamil philosophical concepts of love.

“In English, they call that ‘perversion’. If love happens between a man and another man, that is perversion. It is something that goes against nature,” Thirumavalavan could be heard replying in the video and then went on to argue that such relationships were “against dialectics”.

Answering the question further, he shifted tone and reflected more broadly on love itself, calling it “an emotion beyond derivation”. He noted that love could be described in many ways: “soft or strong”, “effective or terrible”, “necessary or unnecessary”. He added that “you can design it in any way” and concluded by stating that love is not exclusive to humans, but a universal behaviour seen across all animals.

Whilst Thirumavalavan also spoke poetically about the universality of love, the comment drew laughter and applause from the audience. However, his initial words sparked widespread outrage when the clip re-emerged online months later.

LGBTQIA+ groups, artists, and activists condemned Thirumavalavan's remarks, saying such comments from a social justice leader were deeply harmful. The community members noted that homosexuality was declassified as a disorder by the World Health Organisation in 1990 and is legally protected in India. They also argued that liberation movements cannot exclude people for whom they love and that “social justice cannot be selective”.

In the wake of the backlash, Thirumavalavan apologised to the community in a post on social media platform X: “I am very sorry! An explanation for LGBTQ+ comrades!”

“I felt remorse after knowing that my response to a student’s question has caused hurt to the sexual minority community. I was informed that my comment without any hidden agenda has hurt them. I sincerely apologise,” he wrote in his post.

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