Homosexuality: Why does it need to be accepted?

When I first heard the news sto­ry of Jasvir Ram Gin­day, I was sad­dened beyond words. Mr. Gin­day was a Lon­don-based banker, who had cru­el­ly mur­dered his wife, and then set her body on fire in an incin­er­a­tor. He had done all of this in order to hide his sex­u­al ori­en­ta­tion.

He was gay, but despite had mar­ried the beau­ti­ful and edu­cat­ed 24-years-old Varkha Rani last march hav­ing met her through a match-mak­er. He had been a fre­quent vis­i­tor to gay clubs in Birm­ing­ham for many years and had many gay friends. His bride had come to UK after being grant­ed visa in August 2013. A month lat­er, her remains were dis­cov­ered hid­den in the back lawn of the house, which she had shared with her hus­band and his fam­i­ly. Accord­ing to the neigh­bors, the vic­tim had lived a lone­ly and sad life after mar­riage as evi­dent from her expres­sions when­ev­er they caught her sight. The dif­fi­cul­ties in their mar­riage were obvi­ous. Mr. Gin­day had mur­dered her when she had threat­ened to reveal his secret to the fam­i­ly. Accord­ing to him, he had known his sex­u­al ori­en­ta­tion since the age of twelve; how­ev­er, had kept it hid­den from his fam­i­ly fear­ing their dis­may.

Our soci­ety at large is to be blamed for such inci­dents. This hor­ri­fy­ing sto­ry bares our soci­ety so truth­ful­ly like noth­ing ever can. We come across many such sto­ries in which peo­ple are forced to live in con­tra­dic­tion to how they feel or in which they are made to mar­ry just because it is con­sid­ered the right thing and the right time to do so. Such unions usu­al­ly end in dis­as­ters – ruin­ing the lives of every­one involved, and some­times, they may even turn into tragedies like they did in the case of Varkha Rani.

In anoth­er sto­ry that hap­pened to an acquain­tance of mine, she got mar­ried to a guy who showed no inter­est in her phys­i­cal­ly. It was lat­er revealed that he was homo­sex­u­al. She then got divorced from him but this left her men­tal­ly scarred. She had gone into her mar­riage believ­ing that her union would be a hap­py one. How­ev­er, her moth­er-in-law had only thought of her as a cure for the homo­sex­u­al­i­ty of her only son, which had turned out to be no cure after all. Her moth­er-in-law could not bear the thought of hav­ing no grand­chil­dren at all, and there­fore, had decid­ed to put an inno­cent girl’s life on the line. Her son had played along. How­ev­er, he had not been able to pre­tend for long.

In anoth­er sto­ry, a young bride had trav­elled to join her Pak­istani hus­band. After a few months of con­tention, her hus­band had final­ly admit­ted that he was homo­sex­u­al. He had also told her that he is going to divorce her soon as his part­ner was mad at him for get­ting mar­ried, and he could not take it any­more.

All of this most­ly has to do with us as a soci­ety show­ing non-tol­er­ance for peo­ple who feel dif­fer­ent­ly. Our denun­ci­a­tion of any­thing that devi­ates from what we per­ceive to be nor­mal forces many to live a lie. They can­not come out, fear­ing they would be judged, and even if they are able to muster up the courage of stat­ing their truth, they are told that what they are feel­ing is wrong. Usu­al­ly mar­riage is then sug­gest­ed as a cure from their “prob­lems”. As a con­se­quence, they have no choice but to live a dou­ble-life. By doing so, they not only have to trav­el down the ‘guilt-road’, they jeop­ar­dize oth­ers’ lives as well.

The prob­lem is not that peo­ple do not want to be hon­est. The prob­lem is that too many peo­ple are not ready to hear the truth. Homo­sex­u­al­i­ty is a ‘no-go zone’ for many fam­i­lies. How­ev­er, it does not mean that it is not present in our soci­ety. Many say that homo­sex­u­al­i­ty comes nat­u­ral­ly while oth­ers believe it to be a dis­ease of the mind or body. I am not a doc­tor, so I can­not com­ment on the phys­i­o­log­i­cal phe­nom­e­na of the body. How­ev­er, being a psy­chol­o­gist, I have not come across any sub­stan­tial evi­dence sug­gest­ing that homo­sex­u­al­i­ty is a men­tal dis­or­der. Hav­ing said that, it does not mat­ter which the­o­ry you sup­port, both result in homo­sex­u­als hav­ing no choice at all. If they had any, they would have gone the easy way; they would have man­aged to find hap­pi­ness in doing what the soci­ety approves of, but they can­not. Who would want to live a dou­ble life? They are help­less in terms of how they feel, and there is noth­ing in this world they can do to change that. They also should not be forced to change either.

I think it is high time for us to real­ize what Rumi once said: “Beyond our ideas of right and wrong, there is a field.”