NEW DELHI: If the government musters courage to decriminalize homosexuality, or if the Delhi high court effects such a change on the petition challenging Section 377 of IPC, India will shed the dubious distinction of being among the 10 countries that impose life sentence for gay sex.

This category of homophobic countries includes Pakistan, Uganda, Tanzania and Sierra Leone — not exactly the kind of company that a ‘‘liberal democracy’’ like India would want to keep. And, it can’t even draw comfort from the fact that there are eight other countries, even more illiberal, which impose capital punishment for the same offence variously described as ‘‘unnatural offence’’, ‘‘buggery’’, ‘‘sodomy’’ or ‘‘serious indecency’’.

Not surprisingly, those that deter their gay community with the penalty of death are essentially hardline Islamic countries — Saudi Arabia, Iran, UAE, Yemen, Afghanistan, Sudan, Mauritania, and parts of Nigeria.

India would do well to be conscious of the big picture, which shows that more than half the countries in the world have by now decriminalized homosexuality and that it is among the 85 countries that have clung to the archaic ban, accompanied by various degrees of penalty.

Read the full article.