Same-sex marriages will cause havoc, says govt.

The Centre on Thursday opposed any modifications to the present legal guidelines on marriage to recognise similar intercourse marriages, saying such interference would cause “a complete havoc with the delicate balance of personal laws in the country”.

“Living together as partners and having sexual relationship by same sex individuals is not comparable with the Indian family unit concept of a husband, a wife and children which necessarily presuppose a biological man as a ‘husband’, a biological woman as a ‘wife’ and the children born out of the union between the two,” the Centre argued within the Delhi High Court.

It mentioned the 2018 landmark judgment of the Supreme Court decriminalising consensual gay intercourse in India was “neither intended to, nor did it in fact, legitimize the human conduct in question”.

In an affidavit filed in response to petitions looking for to acknowledge similar intercourse marriage, the Central authorities mentioned, “despite the decriminalisation of Section 377 of the Indian Penal Code (IPC), the petitioners cannot claim a fundamental right for same-sex marriage being recognized under the laws of the country”.

The Centre submitted that “registration of marriage of same sex persons also results in violation of existing personal as well as codified law provisions — such as ‘degrees of prohibited relationship’; ‘conditions of marriage’; ‘ceremonial and ritual requirements’ under the personal laws governing the individuals”.

“Any other interpretation except treating ‘husband’ as a biological man and ‘wife’ as a biological woman will make all statutory provisions unworkable,” the federal government cautioned. including, “In a same sex marriage, it is neither possible nor feasible to term one as ‘husband’ and the other as ‘wife’ in the context of legislative scheme of various statutes”.

The Centre additionally mentioned the “question as to whether such a relationship be permitted to be formalised by way of a legal recognition of marriage is essentially a question to be decided by the legislature and can never be a subject matter of judicial adjudication”.

The High Court was listening to three separate petitions by same-sex {couples} looking for to declare that the Special Marriage Act (SMA) and Foreign Marriage Act (FMA) ought to use to all {couples} no matter their gender id and sexual orientation.

A fourth petition on the topic, which got here up for listening to earlier than a bench of Justice Rajiv Sahai Endlaw and Justice Amit Bansal on Thursday, was filed by 4 people who too claimed that the denial of similar intercourse marriage was a denial of rights assured underneath the Constitution.

The High Court has listed the petitions for listening to on April 20.