Only a biological man and a biological woman, in other words, a husband and a wife, make a family.

That was the crux of the Centre's response to petitions seeking recognition and registration of same-sex marriages under the Hindu Marriage Act, the Special Marriage Act, and the Foreign Marriage Act. On 25 February, as the Centre opposed the pleas, it said:

“Living together as partners and having sexual relationship with same sex individual is not comparable with Indian family unit concept of a husband, wife and children, which necessarily presuppose a biological man as 'husband', a biological woman as 'wife' and children born out of union.”

And finally, any judicial interference would cause and I quote, “a complete havoc with the delicate balance of personal laws in the country”.

With the matter now listed for 20 April, let's take a step back to understand who are the petitioners in the case, what are they demanding, what are the arguments made by Solicitor General Tushar Mehta, and why some of the arguments do not hold for the LGBTQI+ community.

And to discuss all this, in today’s episode you will hear from Akshat Agrawal, a research fellow at the Vidhi Centre for Legal Policy, Anjali Gopalan, Human Rights Activist, and Director of The Naz Foundation, and Karan Tripathi, Legal Consultant for The Quint.

Host and Producer: Himmat Shaligram Guest: Akshat Agrawal, Research Fellow at the Vidhi Centre for Legal Policy, Anjali Gopalan, Human Rights Activist and Director of The Naz Foundation, and Karan Tripathi, Legal Consultant for The Quint.

Editor: Shelly Walia

Music: Big Bang Fuzz

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