INDIA: Gov't Accepts Gay Sex Ruling

As India's Supreme Court reconsiders a 2009 ruling that decriminalized gay sex, today the government told the Court that it accepts and will not challenge that earlier ruling.

A lawyer told the Supreme Court that the government would not challenge a 2009 order by the Delhi High Court striking down a colonial-era law that made gay sex a crime. The 2009 high court order had said that treating consensual gay sex between adults as a crime was a violation of fundamental rights protected by India's constitution. Sex between people of the same gender had been illegal in India since the 1860s, when a British colonial law classified it as "against the order of nature." The order was appealed by conservative groups and the Supreme Court is now hearing opinions from those groups as well as gay rights activists.