When the Supreme Court verdict on marriage equality came as a disappointment as a five-judge Constitution Bench, headed by Chief Justice D Y Chandrachud, rejected petitions seeking same-sex marriage and left it for the legislature to decide on the issue, the LGBTQ community in Goa, knew it will be a long battle. However, the members are not giving up hope and are awaiting a more positive response in the coming year.
Chris Fernandes is the CEO and founder of Goa Rainbow Trust, an LGBTQIA non-governmental organization. Based in Mapusa, the trust was formed in 2018 and has over 70 members and also organised Pride De Goa in October 2018. “They are basically not interested in any community getting married. What does the Parliament have to do with it? Are we not paying the same taxes? Everybody is blaming someone else. Even with Section 377, they took so long. By next year, 2024, the verdict should happen. Times have changed,” says Chris.
Francis Fernandes from Borim is the co-founder of Goa Rainbow Trust. He says, “The fight is still going strong and the verdict is not going to set us back. Given by the Supreme Court, there were also directions to the government to make laws protecting transgender persons and all of their rights. But there were a lot of issues with that too. When the first bill was introduced in the Parliament, there were a lot of issues with that because the transgender people were not even consulted. The bill was passed and there were lot of protests that happened and only after that there were lot of things that were rectified in the guidelines, which came out in 2020. Even with this, if the parliament does do something, it will be a repeat of the same story given the homophobic attitude of the government. We are not asking for some special rights that we need a special committee to be set up. What we are asking through the Supreme Court right now through the petitioners is to give us provisions under these existing rights itself. One petitioner asked to make it gender neutral so anyone can avail of those rights because with marriage comes so many other rights. A lot of other rights which follow like the benefits that you get through marriage like medical insurance and so many other things like adoption too, you cannot avail of those rights.”
“Some people are saying that one option can be that they can appeal to the Supreme Court again. Secondly, the community can come together and reach out to their elected officials in their state or government officials at the Centre so that there is some momentum,” says Francis.
Asher Fernandes founded a very informal community group called Ponjeqar in March. He is a part of Goa Pride Collective and hopes to host the Pride Parade in 2024. “The community is very active but there was no community in Panjim so I made this group and kept adding new members who live in Panjim and we are all on Whatsapp groups and we keep organising house parties at people’s houses in Panjim. The community is there and people know each other and can rely on one another. Most of the time, we don’t have families and so this feels nice,” says Asher, who recently organised a Horror drag workshop for Halloween at Vagator.
Vasco-da-Gama-based The Humsaath Trust is the oldest LGBT centre in Goa, pioneering the LGBT movement at the grass-root level. It is a community based organization (CBO) that is working in association with Goa State Aids Control Society (GSACS) and creates awareness for members to live a healthy life with regular checkups for them. Lal Beig, project manager says, “We have to get the right of same sex marriage and the court is supposed to do it. Let’s see what the assembly is going to do next. We hope that we should get the equal rights. We welcome that it is a good progress for us compared to all these years. They have also given the rights for live-in relationships to make the decision on the state level.”
Speaking about The Humsaath Trust, Lal says, “The Humsaath Trust is the first CBO in Goa that was formed 22 years ago. Since it is a CBO, our staff is from the community and we work for the community only. We are doing these activities for the community which has 1500 members in South Goa including transgender community. There are a lot of issues for transgenders in Goa as they don’t get even a house to stay on rent so we are proposing a shelter home for them. We do advocacy and awareness programmes. There are a lot of policies in other states but not in Goa for transgender persons.”
Gautam Bandodkar, from Chinchinim works as a Chief Medical Officer in the emergency department of a hospital in Margao. Gautam says, “More than disappointing, this feels like a betrayal as all these months, they have been rescheduling the decision repeatedly, almost 3-4 times giving us hope that they are building up to something important and that is in our favor. If not for the marriage, at least a civil union or adoption rights something on similar lines should have been done. There should have been some positives. There is no practicality or execution of any decision that they have taken, absolutely none. At least when the decision was not delayed and not given, it seems like there would be something fruitful coming out. It is not a step back but it feels like that for a lot of us.”
An activist for almost 15 years, Gautam is constantly working in creating awareness about the community and reaching out especially to young adults in educational institutes. Gautam feels it is important for the syllabus in the educational system to bring about a positive change, “The syllabus should be talking about non-binary inclusion. Being a doctor, even the medical fraternity is gender oriented. All statistics that are done for diseases are termed as male or female. At least a section of the institution should sensitize one on the issue so that when students are coming out or want to know more about it, they should get a neutral opinion about everything. It is important to start bringing up children in a gender neutral environment especially since conditioning comes when one touches puberty.”
