Noted yoga exponent Baba Ramdev moved the Supreme Court with a special leave petition challenging the recent Delhi HC judgment decriminalising gay sex between two consenting adults. The plea advanced Ramdev’s view that “homosexuality is a disease that is curable” and went on to quote a Spanish psychiatrist who also held the same view. “Right to privacy as a facet of right to life cannot include the right to enjoy deviant sexual preferences and sexual behaviour. The HC erred in striking down the provisions of Section 377 insofar as it penalises consensual unnatural sex act of adults in private by proceeding on the basis of changing moral values and norms, and ignoring the fundamental constitutional principles of judicial restraint.” Despite the National AIDS Control Organisation’s view in favour of decriminalising homosexuality, Ramdev felt it would put a large chunk of the population in the danger of contracting the disease.
