The Pandemic has made life of LGBT community more marginalized. From being forced to stay with homophobic, transphobic families, leading to abuse, to depression, to suicide, to loss of jobs with lame excuses, to inability towards access to covid vaccines, daily lives of LGBT Indians are tragic. According to data shared by The Print, as on 16th May 2021 the number of ‘others’ vaccinated is only 19,392 persons out of the total 13,98,65,001 vaccinated in India.
The judgments of Supreme Court of India on the rights of Transgenders and decriminalizing Sec 377 IPC as far as consensual sexual acts of adults are concerned clearly mentions that Indians belonging to Gender and Sexuality Minority groups, generally known as LGBT Community must be treated equally like any other citizens. Following such upholding of rights, governmental and/or non governmental documents now need to have the “other” category in gender column along with Male and Female. But on ground realty is still grim.
Prantakatha, a youth led organization working for the rights of marginalized youth for last 16 years has raised support to vaccinate people belonging to LGBT Community and the defenders of the cause in association with Techno India DAMA Hospital and Offbeat CCU in Kolkata. The free vaccination drive is flagged off with 50 people from LGBT Community and its defenders. Ironically, the month of June is celebrated across the world as LGBT Pride Month celebrating and reclaiming rights of the marginalized.
