© The Indian Express Pvt Ltd
Tags:
Journalism of Courage
Homosexuality is a “psychological disorder” and legalising same sex marriage “may promote disorder in society rather than curing the patient”, an RSS-affiliated unit working on women’s health has said in a survey report.
It has also made a submission to the Supreme Court where it has claimed that with offspring of same sex couples “fatherless”, it will become difficult to control delinquent behaviour in boys and “sexual activity in girls”.
Samvardhinee Nyas, an RSS wing working on women’s health, education and empowerment, claims to have conducted the survey of over 300 doctors across the country, in “two-and-a-half days”, and concluded that homosexuals should be “cured” through counselling.
Through its counsel advocate Shweta Sharma, it has submitted its conclusions to the Supreme Court, which is hearing petitions seeking legalisation of same sex marriage.
Its submission to the Court says: “If same sex civil marriage becomes common, most same sex couples with children would be lesbian couples. This would mean that we would have yet more children being raised (without) fathers. Among other things, we know that fathers excel in reducing antisocial behavior and delinquency in boys and sexual activity in girls.”
Sharma argues that same sex couples would also end up orienting their children towards homosexuality. “… watching his/her parents accepting same sex marriage will affect the mind of children and they will not consider it as a taboo. In fact they themselves will go for same sex marriage, normalising it, and not realise the difference and importance of opposite sex marriage.”
While RSS chief Mohan Bhagwat earlier this year cited scriptures to assert that homosexuality had been a part of Indian culture for long, last month, a senior Sangh leader – C K Saji Narayanan, former president of the Bharatiya Mazdoor Sangh (BMS) – in his article in the RSS-affiliated magazine The Organiser called gay sex a “practice among rakshasas”, and said India’s Dharmashastras “penalise” such sexual behaviour.
The Samvardhinee Nyas claims that more than 60% of the doctors it had surveyed, belonging to various streams of medicine, from Ayurveda to modern medicine, agreed that homosexuality was a “disorder”. Over 67 doctors felt that homosexual parents could not bring up their offspring properly, while 84.27% doctors refused to give status of marriage to such relations, as per the Nyas’s survey findings.
Further, the Nyas claims, its findings showed that 23.58% doctors confirmed to have treated such patients and “now their life is just like normal people”. It claimed 57.23% doctors also felt that the Supreme Court should not intervene in such cases and 83% doctors confirmed transmission of sexual disease in homosexual relations.
“We are not in support of legalising same sex marriage,” the National Organising Secretary of the Samvardhini Nyas, Madhuri Marathe, told The Indian Express. “We have conducted a survey of over 300 doctors in two-and-a-half days and presented our conclusions in a report. We have tried to cover the social, legal and health angle in the survey.”
Its findings further say that “decision to legalise such marriages may promote more disorder in society rather than curing patients and bringing them to normalcy”; “such relations may increase sexually transmitted diseases, threatening entire society”; “counselling is the better option to cure patients of such a psychological disorder”; “even women security may be at stake”; “public opinion may be sought before taking any decision”; and that “intervention of the Supreme Court in legalising such marriage may challenge the Hindu Marriage Act”.
