India's Supreme Court reversed a ruling that decriminalized sex in 2009, according to a Reuters report.
The decision of the highest court in India was one of the major setbacks of gay rights in India and the rest of the world. The Supreme Court said that only the parliament could change and amend laws, which made the Delhi High Court's decision four years ago a case of overstepping power.
The decision came as a shock to Indian gay rights activists who saw the ruling as a betrayal of people's rights.
"We see this as a betrayal of the very people the court is meant to defend and protect," Arvind Narayan, one of the lawyers representing the consortium of gay rights groups that was defending the 2009 judgment, told Reuters. "In our understanding, the Supreme Court has always sided with those who have no rights."
India's penal code, specifically Section 377, bans "sex against the order of nature." The section is widely interpreted in India to mean homosexual sex. Under the penal code, a person found violating this section can spend 10 years of jail time. Section 377 dates way back when India was still a British colony.
"One would never expect the Supreme Court of India to make such a retrograde order, that is so against the trend internationally," Colin Gonsalves, a human rights lawyer, told Reuters. "This takes us back to the dark ages. This is a day of mourning for us in India."
Before the Supreme Court reversed the 2009 ruling of the Delhi High Court, gay sex between consenting adults was exempted from Section 377 after the Naz Foundation, an Indian sexual rights organization, filed a case that lasted for almost a decade.
When the High Court ruled in gay rights' favor, opposition to the 2009 ruling took place, mostly by faith-based groups and appealed to the Supreme Court.
"All the major communities of the country -- the Hindus, the Christians and the Muslims -- had appealed against the ruling of the Delhi High Court," a lawyer for a Muslim charity told reporters. "They had said that this unnatural sex is not permissible in all the religions of the world."
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