Gay sex ruling to free India’s ‘pink economy’

Mumbai, India – From LGBT nightclubs to “gaycations” and more, a court ruling legalizing homosexuality in India is set to unlock one of the world’s largest “pink economies”, experts said.

The Supreme Court’s historic decision last week to scrap a colonial-era ban on gay sex sparked joy as activists held rainbow-colored celebrations across the country.


Now the community can expect to see businesses lining up to offer a range of tailored products, in fashion, health and other industries, providing a massive boost to Asia’s third-biggest economy.

“It can bring billions of dollars to the Indian economy if they can activate the spending of gay people in India,” Keshav Suri, a hotelier and petitioner in the landmark case, told AFP.

“There is business to be done, real estate to be bought and sold, holidays and all the services that go with that.”

“The value of the pink economy and the social aspects of the LGBT community are too large now for us to ignore,” added Suri, executive director of the Lalit hotel group.

India is home to more than 55 million LGBT adults, according to Out Now Consulting, a marketing agency that helps businesses target gay and lesbian consumers.

Their nominal income is around $113 billion annually, the firm estimates. LGBT couples have fewer children than other groups and higher-than-average salaries, meaning plenty of disposable cash.

“They represent one of the world’s largest LGBT markets,” Ian Johnson, founder of the Australia-based Out Now Consulting, told AFP.

He made a prediction that drinks brands and travel companies will be the first to target the LGBT community following the scrapping of Section 377, which was introduced 157 years ago.

LGBT bars, clubs and cafes will provide new employment and boost sales in the food and alcohol industries while people will be able to attend holidays designed specifically for the gay market without fear of legal reprisal.

Nakshatra Bagwe, a Mumbai-based entrepreneur, runs The BackPack Travels, a company specializing in organizing trips for LGBT tourists.

He said it has been profitable since it was set up in October 2016 but he expects to see an increase in revenue following the law change.

“With legality and freedom on our side businesses will invest in the community and opportunities will increase in the coming years,” he told AFP.

Legal and free

Inder Vhatwar, another businessman based in India’s financial capital, also hopes to profit from the ruling by judges who said members of the gay community deserve an apology for the treatment they have suffered.

Shortly after gay sex was briefly decriminalized before by the Delhi High Court in 2009, Vhatwar opened a store called D’Kloset in Mumbai’s trendy neighborhood of Bandra, where several Bollywood stars live.

He sold glitzy clothes, handbags and party masks, but after the ban was reinstated in 2013 Vhatwar was evicted by his landlord.

“I faced a lot of challenges due to Section 377 and had to shut down but with this recent judgement I am planning to start the store again,” the 37-year-old told AFP.

Gay sex has long been a taboo subject for many in socially conservative India, with religious groups in particular fiercely opposing any liberalization of sexual morality.

The World Bank said in a 2014 report that homophobic attitudes and a reluctance to hire LGBT people hampered India’s economic growth by up to 1.7 percent annually.

Research shows that LGBT-friendly policies in the workplace, such as equality training and non-discriminatory hiring practices, can boost profitability.

Activists expressed hope the court ruling will help shift attitudes and boost the LGBT community’s economic engagement as the commercial benefits are realized.

“The LGBT community is definitely an untapped market. The business potential is huge and set to grow,” Parmesh Shahani, who heads up the cultural arm of India’s Godrej conglomerate, told AFP.

“The verdict will catalyze change and more companies will invest in products and services catering to the community. I hope the judgment creates more jobs and companies vie for LGBTQ talent,” he added. /kga

source: business.inquirer.net

Dating site protests anti-gay-marriage contributor

SAN JOSE, California — The appointment of a new CEO by the company that makes the Firefox Web browser has prompted board members to quit, a Twitter frenzy and a push back from a leading dating website because he supported California’s former gay marriage ban.

Mozilla, the nonprofit maker of the Firefox browser, infuriated many employees and users last week by hiring co-founder Brendan Eich to lead the Mountain View company. In 2008, Eich gave $1,000 to the campaign to pass California’s Proposition 8, a constitutional amendment that outlawed same-sex marriages in California until the U.S. Supreme Court left in place a lower-court ruling striking it down.

The contribution was publicly reported and drew some negative attention two years ago, when Eich was Mozilla’s chief technology officer. But when he was promoted to CEO last week, his support of the ban took on more gravitas.

Three of the Mozilla Foundation’s six board members have quit, according to a Wall Street Journal blog, and thousands of employees and community members weighed in on Twitter over the weekend.

On Monday, New York-based dating service OkCupid.com replaced its usual home page for users logging in with Firefox.

“Hello there, Mozilla Firefox user. Pardon this interruption of your OkCupid experience.

Mozilla’s new CEO, Brendan Eich, is an opponent of equal rights for gay couples. We would therefore prefer that our users not use Mozilla software to access OkCupid,” the message says.

OkCupid President Christian Rudder said he and the firm’s three other co-founders decided to post the message after discussing Eich’s appointment over the weekend.

He said 12 percent of OkCupid’s approximately 3 billion monthly page views come through Firefox, while 8 percent of the site’s users are gay or lesbian.

“We don’t think this was the right thing for people to donate money to, and this is someone we do business with so we decided to take action,” Rudder said.

Mozilla, which is promoted with the slogan, “Doing good is part of our code,” responded Monday with an emailed statement saying the company supports equality for all, including marriage equality for gay couples.

“No matter who you are or who you love, everyone deserves the same rights and to be treated equally,” said the statement. “OkCupid never reached out to us to let us know of their intentions, nor to confirm facts.”

Mozilla says about half a billion people around the world use Firefox, which has free, open software written in part by volunteers. Firefox has been losing market share to Google Inc.’s Chrome browser in recent years.

source: technology.inquirer.net

LGBT Fil-Ams hail same-sex marriage triumphs

SAN FRANCISCO—Darwin Dayan and his husband, Deo Patrimonio-Martin, who have been together for 18 years and wed five years ago, screamed with delight when they heard that DOMA had been struck down.  Their union in 2008 remains valid because they luckily wed during the brief period when same-sex marriage was legal in California.

The United States Supreme Court on June 26, the last day of its session this term, issued two stunning decisions on same-sex marriage that were heard around the world.

It overturned the Defense of Marriage Act’s (DOMA) federal ban on same- sex marriage as unconstitutional, thus allowing married same-sex couples in states where same sex-marriage is legal to receive federal benefits. The highest court of the land also ruled that proponents of California’s Proposition 8, banning same-sex marriage, had no standing or right to appeal the district court’s ruling that the initiative violated the state Constitution, thus facilitating the resumption of same-sex marriages in the country’s most populous state.

Elated

Like Dayan and Patrimonio-Martin, other members of the Filipino LGBT community were elated by these historical rulings, which brought them a step closer to achieving full equality.

Dayan welcomes the ruling, which not only recognizes their marriage on the federal level, but also makes it easier for him and Patrimonio-Martin, a pharmacist, to handle their estate and file taxes like any straight couple. Dayan, a consultant for a human resources firm in San Francisco, has had a long history of activism in the LGBT community. In the 1990s, he served as co-chair of the board of directors of the Gay Asian Pacific Alliance and the Filipino Task Force on AIDS.

Jay and Shirley Mercado, who are advocates for marriage equality and the comprehensive immigration reform bill, were watching the morning news on TV when they heard the Supreme Court decisions.

“We jumped for joy, tears in our eyes, and could not believe what we were hearing,” Jay Mercado recalls. Jay, who works in the insurance industry, and Shirley, who manages a day care center at their home, have been together for 27 years and married in San Francisco in 2004 when same sex-marriage was legal for a few months in California.   However, the passage of Proposition 8 in 2008 invalidated their union. The Mercados have 16-year-old twin sons, Jashley and Joriene.

Jay says, “The decisions brought our family honor and dignity, and now we do not have to worry about Shirl’s immigration status in the future.”  The Department of Homeland Security has already issued an official statement confirming that in view of the DOMA decision immigration visa petitions may now be filed on behalf of a same-sex spouse in the same manner as an opposite-sex spouse. Mercado, who is a US citizen, will be able to file a petition for US residency for her wife, Shirley.






Far-reaching effects


The Supreme Court’s decisions will have far-reaching effects throughout the rest of the country. The demise of DOMA paves the path for legal challenges against the remaining 37 states that still ban same-sex marriage. But the Court ruling, which only allows federal benefits to married same-sex couples that reside in states that allow such unions, still poses a real dilemma for couples that decide to move to states that do not allow them.

The Supreme Court’s decision on California’s Proposition 8, which was based on technicality rather than its constitutionality, also promises to trigger a tsunami of lawsuits from same-sex couples living in those 37 states. Though the Court fell short of declaring a sweeping endorsement of same-sex marriage in the two cases, it is clear that the country would never be the same again.

As same-sex marriage is now legal in 13 states, including California and the District of Columbia, 30 percent, or about one-third of the country’s population, now lives in states where same-sex marriage is allowed.  David Boies, a lead attorney in the challenge to Proposition 8, said in a statement published in the San Francisco Chronicle, “The principles the court articulated today mean that we are going to have marriage equality in all 50 states. It’s just a question of time now.”



Unfinished fight
Nevertheless, the LGBT community and its supporters are aware that there is still lot of work ahead. Anti-same-sex marriage groups and individuals, including Republican politicians like Senator Lindsey Graham of South Carolina, have vowed to continue their crusade against marriage equality. Graham was quoted as declaring, “Today’s Supreme Court ruling will not change South Carolina law, and I will continue to fight for and defend the traditional definition of marriage.”

In view of this polarizing political landscape, Jamie Manson, an award-winning columnist for the National Catholic Reporter, issued a cautionary tale. Manson stated, “If right-wing lawmakers are successful in restricting voter eligibility among the disenfranchised, LGBT civil rights will be as vulnerable as government entitlement, civil liberties, collective bargaining and protections for immigrants.”

Manson notes that a mere 24 hours before announcing the same-sex marriage decisions, the Supreme Court gutted a key provision of the Voting Rights Act that had subjected states that have historically practiced racial discrimination and want to amend their voting laws to strict scrutiny.

Voting rights and gay rights

Manson says, “The fight against voter suppression laws and the fight for LGBT rights share some deep connections. At the most fundamental level, both are civil rights battles for equal protection under the law.”

Thelma Estrada, a San Francisco attorney and Filipino community activist, agrees with Manson. Estrada, who is the current president of a local union of attorneys and a longtime supporter of gay rights, states, “The struggle of the LGBT community for equal protection under the law is part of the civil rights struggle. Just as we demand for equality for gay rights, we should also demand for equality at the voting booth. We need to affirm our commitment to fight discrimination of any kind.”

Fighting for equality is something that the Mercados, Dayan and many members of the Fil-Am LGBT community have shown they could do very well. They campaigned tirelessly against Proposition 8 and supported the battle for marriage equality by fundraising, making speeches, joining rallies and lobbying Congress. While pledging to continue the struggle for LGBT rights, they also see the need to defend other civil rights issues.

Jay Mercado says, “The LGBT and other communities should fight for any issues that will make us all equal.” Dayan echoes Mercado, stating, “As minorities, we need to watch out for laws and edicts that affect each of us. That’s why it’s often perplexing to me when people of color would make homophobic comments or be against marriage equality when we are all fighting for fairness and equality under the law.”

source: globalnation.inquirer.net