POLITICAL PARTIES

The issue of homosexuality was never free from the perplexed political parties of India.While some parties such as Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) have opposed abolition of Section 377 by claiming homosexuality to be obscene and insignificant, left-wing parties such as the Communist Party of India (CPI) have disapproved of a change in the law on the ground that homosexuality is a Western import. Throughout the course of the court case against Section 377, all political parties and parties in power opposed changes to the law.However, such unequivocal opposition to the rights of homosexuals has also been marked by some incidents interrupting the continuity of the states hand in the last few years, as a result of changes in political leadership. The shift in political leadership from the right-wing NDA to a centrist left leaning UPA has arguably brought changes to the state responses to lesbian gay activism in the context of Section 377. In 2009, the Minister of Law and Justice, M. Veerappa Moily publicly admitted that Section 377 had been misused by state authorities to exploit homosexual people (The Indian Express 2009). While not straightforwardly accepting that a change in Secton 377 was needed, government agencies such as the Ministry of Home Affairs and the Ministry of Health and Family Welfare have been open to debating the validity and value of this law (The Times of India 2009).The court case also brought to the fore the tenuous relationships between different state agencies vis--vis gay and lesbian rights and laws. Whereas the Home Ministry cons