The Supreme Court ruled recently that pre-marital sex between two people in a live-in relationship is not an offense. This is farcical on several fronts.
Firstly, do we really need the Supreme Court to rule on the right for two people to voluntarily decide to live together and have a sexual relationship? Secondly, who gave the moral police the right to consider this to be an offense to file a complaint with the SC? Apparently their objection is that - "The actress, Khusboo's comments allegedly endorsing pre-marital sex would adversely affect the minds of young people leading to decay in moral values and country's ethos." . The complainants are a bunch of self-righteous prudes who think they have the duty to protect the society and its youth from decay.
Some of the comments by the 3-judge bench add some levity to the situation. Here, at the risk of being redundant, they make their positions clear - ""When two adult people want to live together what is the offence. Does it amount to an offence? Living together is not an offence. It cannot be an offence." . Even the guardians of the law have to resort to religious references to defend their position - "Even Lord Krishna and Radha lived together according to mythology".
But finally, they make a telling point before passing judgment by asking the complainants - "How many homes have been affected can you tell us," the Bench asked while enquiring whether the complainants had daughters. When the response was in the negative, they shot back, "Then, how are you adversely affected ?"
The SC judges doesn't need to be praised for passing such an obvious judgment. Its unfortunate that being part of a democratic system makes it necessary for them to have to attend to such frivolous complaints. But, what's even sadder is that we need the SC to validate the most basic right of two individuals to make a choice of living together without the official act of marriage.
