Opposition to moves to overturn Section 377 had rested predominately on religious and moral objections. There is not much left to argue," he added. "Last year's ruling eviscerated the 2013 judgment," said Gonsalves. The ruling, which declared sexual orientation to be an "essential attribute of privacy," helped galvanize campaigners.
That case was strengthened last year, when the Supreme Court moved to uphold the constitutional right to privacy. It was not legal and it was based wrongly on the tenets of the constitution," said Colin Gonsalves, one of the lawyers representing the current group of petitioners. In its 2013 ruling, the Supreme Court said that only a "minuscule fraction of the country's population constitute lesbians, gays, bisexuals or transgenders" and it was therefore "legally unsustainable" to repeal the act.Äuring the latest hearings, lawyers representing more than a dozen gay and lesbian Indians questioned the constitutional basis of that earlier ruling. The decision, which only applied to the Delhi region, was quickly overruled by the Supreme Court in 2013, following a petition launched by a loose coalition of Christian, Hindu and Muslim groups. In 2009, the Delhi High Court ruled that the ban on consensual gay sex violated fundamental rights. Thursday's historic ruling is the culmination of a lengthy and often fraught legal battle for equality in a country where homosexuality remains taboo.