Indians on Friday protested a Supreme
Court ruling reinstating a ban on gay sex with a #GayForADay online
campaign.
The campaign was provoked by the
surprising ruling handed down two days earlier.
India's high court overturned a lower
court's 2009 ruling which declared intercourse between two consenting
members of the same sex legal. The Supreme Court said that only
parliament has the power to change Section 377 of India's penal code.
(Related: India's
Supreme Court reinstates gay sex ban.)
The one-day social event was the
brainchild of Tanmay Sahay, who created a
Facebook “Gay for a Day” page asking people to support the
LGBT community by posting photos of themselves kissing someone of the
same sex.
“We have taken a simple symbol of
love, friendship and solidarity – a kiss – to say that we stand
together in our fight for rights. This is not a fight for gay
rights. It is a fight for human rights and [it] impacts all of us.
We are all queer and we must stand together to show the courts and
all those who hate, that love does not discriminate on the basis of
gender or sexuality and that it conquers all,” Sahay wrote.
The hashtag #GayForADay on Friday
bloomed across several social platforms, including Facebook, Twitter
and Instagram.