India’s top court declines to legalise same-sex marriage

India‘s top court on Tuesday declined to legalise same–sex marriage and left it to parliament to decide, agreeing with Prime Minister Narendra Modi’s government that the legislature is the right forum to rule on the contentious issue.

The unanimous order by a five-judge bench came as a huge disappointment to the large LGBTQ community in the world’s most populous country, five years after the court scrapped a colonial-era ban on gay sex.There was no immediate response from the government to the court ruling but Modi’s nationalist Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) administration had opposed petitions to the court on the issue, saying same–sex marriage is not “comparable with the Indian family unit concept of a husband, a wife and children”.The court decision came in response to more than a dozen petitions filed since last year. The bench, headed by Chief Justice D.Y. Chandrachud, heard arguments in April and May and pronounced its verdict on Tuesday.

via Reuters