Match not made in heaven
The pressure to get married is something which is socially accepted in India. Now imagine if this is applied to the LGBT community as well. Like any forced marriage, it is bound to lead to pain, hurt and ultimately unhappiness.
Take Bindumadhav Khire, a gay man, who was forced into a heterosexual marriage. "The marriage did not last, we got divorced in a year," he says. For a lot of gay men, their parents marry them off in an attempt to "correct" their sexual orientation. This does not work and is detrimental for both parties involved.
For lesbian women, the marginalization is even more pronounced. They are not only beaten and tortured, there is also something called "corrective rapes" by family members. When all doors close, suicide seems like the only option. Sumita, one of the founder-members of Sappho for Equality, Kolkata, speaks about this girl who was raped by her cousins and brother to change her orientation. Then she got married to escape the torture. But that led nowhere. "This girl was married for three months and after that, she committed suicide," says Sumita.
Prince, a gay rights counsellor from Naz Foundation says, "Those who marry, after being pressurised by their family, can never be happy."