A friend of mine and I had an argument recently. It all started with a letter drafted and signed by people like Amartya Sen, Vikram Seth, etc. It was a signature campaign to repeal Article 377 of Indian Penal Code that makes homosexuality a crime.

The man who drafted the letter wrote in a paper, “As a gay Indian one always feels like an outsider, ostracised. I felt like a criminal all the time." IPC (which covers only the “unnatural” sex act, and mind you, only male – not lesbian) apart, does a gay (including both male and female homosexuals) Indian really feel like a criminal socially and culturally in India? I don’t think so.

This is one society which doesn’t see anything unnatural in two men and two women hugging tightly or moving around with their fingers locked, or with arms around each other’s shoulders. The society doesn’t find anything odd if a man or a woman on the pillion holds the two wheeler rider tightly from behind. But the same society finds it alarming if a man and a woman hold hands or embrace in public.

Police have in the past arrested young boys and girls sitting close to each other in parks and beaches in Chennai, Lucknow and maybe in many other places. But the same police do not find anything odd if people of the same sex indulge in the same activities. For that matter, take any old Hindi film; all of them celebrate ‘gay’ behaviour unabashedly though not intentionally. Against this background, I don’t understand how a ‘gay’ man in India feels like a criminal. What he does within the confines of private spaces may be a criminal offence but in public, ‘gay’ behaviour is quite ‘normal’. In fact, it is the man who loves a woman- a natural feeling to have- who should be feeling like a criminal in India. Lovers are arrested and prevented from getting married, and they are treated as people worse than criminals.

Personally I feel homosexuality is unnatural and abnormal. The ‘modern and cool’ friend of mine was alarmed at my opinion and ridiculed me for not accepting homosexuality and lesbianism as a natural way of life. According to her, there is nothing unnatural in getting attracted to someone of the same sex as it has existed from Biblical times, though not sanctioned by the social or religious establishment. So what? Does that make it natural?

I may be called a woman belonging to the primitive ages but I don’t care because I feel that same-sex-attraction is unnatural. Had it been natural, life would not have continued at all on earth both among human beings and animals. The natural thing is for the opposite sex to get attracted because that is the only way life perpetuates itself. Homosexuality is abnormal because normal human beings with normal hormonal levels do not get attracted to the same sex.

My ‘cool’ friend was also alarmed to hear about my opinion on the film ‘Brokeback Mountain’. It was nauseating for me to watch two men make love. It was equally nauseating to watch two women make love in ‘Fire’. That led me to search on the Internet what researchers and sociologists say on this subject.

After going through several studies, I found that there was no scientific basis to the ‘born gay’ theory and ALL researchers have dismissed this theory. A new research study by a University of Illinois team, which has screened the entire human genome, reported that there is no ‘gay gene’. In the journal Human Genetics, researcher Dr. Brian Mustanski wrote that environmental factors were also likely to be involved.

Results of a study by Peter Bearman and Hannah Bruckner (Yale University) support the role of “social influences, reject the hormone transfer model, reject a speculative evolutionary theory, and are consistent with a general model that allows for genetic ex-pression of same-sex attraction under specific, highly circumscribed, social conditions”.

Going back to the letter that says gay men are treated as criminals in India, let me cite an example, that it is not so. During my walks, I used to see two women- one dressed in either sari or salwar kameez and the other in trousers and shirt- regularly, with their fingers locked all the time. The way they walked, the way they looked, the way they touched, there was something very odd. They looked and behaved more like lovers. One day, I saw the young girl kissing the elderly woman on her cheeks repeatedly and passionately as they walked. A couple of women who walked past them did not even give them a second glace. On the other hand, everyday I see walkers looking angrily at the young boys and girls engaged in love-talk as if they were committing the biggest crime on earth!