‘Against teaching of Prophet’: Shiite body moves SC against same-sex marriage | India News

NEW DELHI: A Shiite religious body on Monday moved the Supreme Court, days after Jamiat Ulama-i-Hind, opposing petitions seeking same-sex marriage rights for members of LGBTQ+ community on the ground that such marriages are prohibited in Islam and that homosexuality is against the Prophet’s preaching.
Telangana Markazi Shia Ulema Council through advocate Ejaz Maqbool said the idea of same-sex marriage is in teeth of the injunctions of Islamic faith. “Marriage in Indian society has deep roots in religion and therefore, religious prohibitions on same-sex marriage ought to be considered while examining the question of the legal validity of same-sex marriages,” it told the SC.
Countering the petitioners’ reference to judgments from western world courts legitimizing same-sex marriage, the Shiite body said the United Nations Human Rights Committee (UNHRC) had held in ‘Joslin vs New Zealand’ that New Zealand had not violated the International Covenant on Civil and Political Rights (ICCPR) by denying same-sex couples the right to marry and that the ICCPR envisaged marriage as a purely heterosexual arrangement.

“The European Court of Human Rights held in ‘Schalk and Kopf vs Austria’ that the European Convention on Human Rights does not impose an obligation on the Respondent Government therein to grant a same-sex couple access to marriage. This ruling was reaffirmed in ‘Olivieri vs Italy’,” the Shia Ulema Council said, while seeking to be a party in the proceedings before a 5-J bench.
“In the light of the judgments delivered by the European Court of Human Rights and the decision of the United Nations Human Rights Committee, that there is no right to same sex marriage in international law,” it said.
Quoting western research papers, the Shiite body said they show that children raised by homosexual parents lag children raised by heterosexual couples in most areas of human development.

It said, “The idea of legitimizing same-sex marriages is exclusively western and entirely unsuited to the social fabric of India. In the West/Global North, religion has largely ceased to be a source of law and plays very little role in public life. On the other hand, religion plays an instrumental role in shaping personal law, along with social norms and family ties in India and mainstream religions (including Islam) practiced in India are entirely opposed to homosexuality and same-sex marriages.”