Apno ka Bahut Lagta Hai- Debates Our Own Hurt Us the Most: Centering Familial Violence in the Lives of Queer and Trans Persons in the Marriage Equality (A Report on the Findings from a Closed-Door Public Hearing on April 1, 2023. Organised by PUCL and Nat

Abstract

This report comes to you at a time when questions around who can be family and whether adult citizens of this country have a say in forming their families and intimacies, are being asked at the Supreme Court via some twenty petitions for Marriage Equality. The thus-far-acceptable ways of forming socially and legally legible families are through birth (and adoption) and marriage. Marriage is thus far available only to heterosexual couples. In its response to the Marriage Equality petitions, the State on March 13, 2023, said, “despite statutory recognition of the relationship of marriage between a biological man and a biological woman, marriage necessarily depends upon age-old customs, rituals, practices, cultural ethos and societal values,” and further added “it is regarded as a sacrament, a holy union and a sanskar.” (Balaji, 17th April 2023, the Telegraph) In the same statement, the Attorney General suggested that since 2018, queer and trans communities do not face any stigma.