The LGBTQA+ community has fought for their rights to live a dignified life for the longest time. After years of revolts, art, marches, speeches and whatnot, the community has finally gained respectable recognition in this society. To celebrate the struggle and to empower each other, the community celebrate June as Pride Month. The celebration is an attempt to teach people about the community and educate them about how damaging homophobia is.
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Represented by a rainbow, Pride Month is all about accepting and loving everyone the way they are. Here are a few things you should know about this month and the community.
What is Pride Month?
Pride month is dedicated to the LGBTQ+ community and it is all about people coming together and celebrating love. Discussions about how far the community has come, honouring the struggles people have gone through, encouraging being comfortable in one’s own skin – Pride Month is all about this. To sum it up, it is a celebration of the LGBTQA+ community.
Why do we celebrate Pride Month?
It all started with a riot in 1969, The Stonewall Riots changed everything for the queer community. June 28 was the day everything changed when while one of the most popular gay bars, Greenwich Village’s Stonewall Inn was raided as usual by the NY police. The raids were a common thing. The police would arrive at queer bars and harass the people. June 28 was yet another such day but it all changed when people decided to fight back.
The community protested hard for several days. They protested against the American Constitution which had laws banning homosexuality and discrimination towards queer people. The protest started a trend that is still very prevalent. The first official Pride parade was carried out after a year on the same day to mark the anniversary of the Stonewall Riots. The tradition has continued to date.
How Is Global Pride Day 2021 Celebrated?
Global Pride Day will be celebrated on June 28 globally. People gather around for parades, concerts and marches. They gather to celebrate love and also try to make people aware of the rights of the community. Even after so many years, they are still fighting hard to give the community the right to marry, that right to adopt children, fight hate speech, and hate crimes, and to simply allow queer folks to exist.
Pride In India
India has a wild LGBTQA+ history as well. When India was being rules by the British, they had declared homosexual intercourse unnatural. It was considered a criminal offence under Chapter 16, Section 377 of the Indian Penal Code. Even after independence, Section 377 remained existent. Decades later, in 1992, the first protest for gay rights was conducted. India’s first Gay Pride Parade help in 1999 in Kolkata.
In 2009, a petetion filed by Naz Foundation lead to a landmark decision where Delhi High Court held that treating consensual homosexual sex between adults as a crime is a violation of their fundamental rights. However, in 2013, the Supreme Court overturned the Delhi High Court Naz Foundation v. Govt. of NCT of Delhi case and reinstated Section 377 of the Indian Penal Code. MP Shashi Tharoor introduced a bill to decriminalise homosexuality as well but it was rejected by the Lok Sabha.
2017 was the year of hope when the Supreme Court, in the landmark Puttuswamy judgement, supported the right to privacy as a fundamental right under the Constitution. On Sept. 6, 2018, the Supreme Court finally unanimously ruled that Section 377 was unconstitutional.
