Equal Rights are not a Zero-Sum Game

I wholly intended to write a blog post sooner about the decriminalization of homosexual acts in Delhi, but I just haven't had the time to sit down and jot my thoughts, in a way that is comprehensive enough to do justice to the complexity of the situation. 

However, for now, I am posting a response I wrote to an article by former Indian Today editor Swapan Dasgupta that was published in "The Pioneer" yesterday: 

Equal Rights are not a Zero-Sum Game

 

It is painful to note well-educated, prolific and intelligent people propagate misleading and ignorant beliefs. That is the first feeling I had when I read Mr. Swapan Dasgupta’s article “Aggressive Gay Evangelism.” In his article, published in Pioneer dated July 5, 2009, Mr. Dasgupta claims that the Delhi High Court judgment amending Section 377 of the Indian Penal Code may “open the floodgates” to his eponymous term “aggressive gay evangelism.”

He fears that the decriminalization of same-sex carnal relations will eventually, and invariably, lead to such frightening things as lowering the age of consent, accommodating gay marriage, and allowing the right of adoption to gay couples – all ideas that, presumably, go against the “natural order of society.” Why should these ideas be such frightening prospects to Mr. Dasgupta. It is not as if sexual and gender minorities fighting for further rights would personally be harmful to him in any way.

Mr. Dasgupta is concerned about “in-your-face-gayness” and militant gay activism, and believes all gay activism to be defined by this “perverseness.” This concern can be addressed with two brief points. The first is that some amount of what he terms “in-your-face-gayness” is required for increasing the visibility of an otherwise invisible minority. The second is simply that not much gay activism is militant or “in-your-face” at all – a lot of this activism is happening in the courtrooms, on editorial pages such as these, and in day-to-day lives of people living their lives honestly and openly. 

He further has the audacity to claim that “the invocation of equality and the principles of non-discrimination” with regards to LGBT rights might be a “double-edged sword” as the assertiveness and desire for equality by the LGBT rights movement could very well “spin out of control.” Perhaps Mr. Dasgupta, and others that hold similar beliefs as him, need to understand that equal rights are not a zero-sum game. When a particular minority group gains equal rights, it does not necessarily come at the cost of those same rights that were already afforded to the majority or to other minority groups. For instance, the legalizing of gay marriages does not undermine the validity or sanctity of heterosexual marriages, and altering school curricula to remove heteronormative assumptions does not in any way indicate, as Mr. Dasgupta appears to believe, that “man-woman relations are not the natural order of society.”

Perhaps the reason some heterosexual (or male or upper-caste or rich) people question the needs and demands of minority groups fighting for equal rights is simply because they are worried not about losing their own rights, but about losing the privilege that their status as a part of the majority with exclusive rights had guaranteed them. To use a rather politically incorrect analogy, finding that their domestic help has happened upon an inheritance that makes him richer than they are would decidedly make most people uncomfortable, because it forces them to question what they took for granted about their personal superiority that came from being wealthier, and thus, more privileged. Mr. Dasgupta’s knee-jerk reaction to LGBT communities fighting from equality might stem from a similar concern – what happens to his heterosexual privilege when those homosexuals could have the same rights as he presently does, when their relationships are recognized as valid as his, when their human dignity is considered every bit as respectable as his own?

Decriminalization of homosexual behavior may indeed serve as the starting point for further LGBT activism in the country – indeed, moving towards full equality, as part of the same “gender-neutral, non-denominational, secular, uniform civil code”, in Mr. Dasgupta’s own words, desired by the makers of our Constitution. And since it’s not a zero-sum game that we are playing, perhaps this full equality for sexual and gender minorities would only strengthen the unity of the country. 

And just for kicks, a closing quote from Tocqueville (that great scholar of democracy): 

"If it be admitted that a man possessing absolute power may misuse that power by wronging his adversaries, why should not a majority be liable to the same reproach? Men do not change their characters by uniting with one another; nor does their patience in the presence of obstacles increase with their strength. For my own part, I cannot believe it; the power to do everything, which I should refuse to one of my equals, I will never grant to any number of them."

Alexis de Tocqueville, "Tyranny of the Majority," Chapter XV, Book 1, Democracy in America