Naga People’s Front (NPF) has supported Central government’s stand of opposing same-sex marriage and insisted that Supreme Court should not legalise it.
Noting that the apex court was hearing a case relating to allowing same-sex marriages, NPF legislature Party leader Kuzholuzo (Azo) Nienu in a press release said the matter was very sensitive and one that could have far-reaching implications for the society and the very foundation of traditions upheld over the millennia.
He asserted that Naga customary law nor any of the known faiths, including Christianity, allowed marriages among same sexes, whether men or women. He mentioned that these religious institutions that were repositories of centuries of wisdom had a variety of reasons for not allowing such institutionalised relationships.
Azo pointed out that, as first described in Genesis, marriage was a God-ordained covenant relationship between a man and a woman. He quoted US-based National Association of Evangelicals quotes Matthew 19:4-6: “Haven’t you read,” Jesus replied, “that at the beginning the Creator ‘made them male and female,’ and said, ‘For this reason a man will leave his father and mother and be united to his wife, and the two will become one flesh’? So they are no longer two, but one flesh. Therefore what God has joined together, let no one separate.”
Notwithstanding what were in the scriptures, he said Naga people had traditionally followed age-old wisdom and had believed in the holy union of man and woman, which was marriage.
Therefore, he said what was being proposed was unwise and not only against centuries of wisdom, but also against popular thought and belief in Nagaland and elsewhere in India and rest of the world.
Talking of the practical fallout of a move to legalise same-sex marriages, Azo pointed out that the Centre itself would have to amend a host of laws relating to inheritance and even custody of children, in case of separation of partners due to the debatable nature of who was man and who was wife. This, he cautioned would lead to further complications and legal tangles that might not be easy to resolve.
He warned that it might be impossible to reconcile such a change with respect to Naga customary law.
Azo said it would be an unwise and impractical move to legalise same-sex marriage. He recalled that the Centre had legalised homosexuality in 2018 following a Supreme Court order and this was largely tolerated and accepted, even if grudgingly by many. But, he warned that legalising same-sex marriages might have a more unsavoury reaction from the society at large.
