LGBTQIA+ couples have right to find a family: Madras high court

CHENNAI: Though Supreme Court has not legalised same-sex marriage, individuals can still form a family, Madras high court has said, adding: “Marriage is not the sole mode to find a family. The concept of a ‘chosen family’ is now well settled and acknowledged in LGBTQIA+ jurisprudence.”A division bench of Justices G R Swaminathan and V Lakshminarayanan made the observation on May 22, while setting at liberty a 25-year-old lesbian woman, who was forcefully separated from her partner and subjected to harassment by her family.“Not every parent is like Justice Leila Seth. She could acknowledge and accept her son’s sexual orientation,” the judges said. “The mother of the detenue is no Leila Seth. We could understand her feelings and temperament.

She wants her daughter to be like any other normal, heterosexual woman, get married and settle down in life. We endeavoured in vain to impress upon her that her daughter, being an adult, is entitled to choose a life of her own,” they added.Also, deprecating the use of the word ‘queer’ to identify non-heterosexual individuals, the judges said: “We feel a certain discomfort in employing the expression ‘queer’. Any standard dictionary defines this word as meaning strange or odd.

Queering one’s pitch means spoiling the show.” “To a homosexual individual, his/her/their sexual orientation must be perfectly natural and normal. There is nothing strange or odd about such inclinations.

Why then should they be called queer?” they asked.The court further placed on record that the jurisdictional police behaved in an insensitive manner in the issue by forcing the detenue to go with her parents. “We censure the rank inaction on the part of police and the insensitivity shown by them.

We hold that govt officials, in particular the jurisdictional police, have a duty to expeditiously and appropriately respond whenever complaints of this nature are received from the members of the LGBTQIA+ community,” the court said.The court then restrained the detenue’s family members from interfering with her personal liberty and issued a writ of continuing mandamus to the jurisdictional police to afford adequate protection to the detenue and her partner who moved the habeas corpus petition.