Accepted Panels

The conventional usage of the term “family” both in the legal jurisprudence and in social parlance, conveys the idea that it refers to a single, stable unit consisting of a mother, a father and their offspring. In the current socio-legal setting, this assumption seems to be flawed, owing to the fact that this strict compartmentalization of the familial structure renders the members of the LGBTQ community insignificant. The people who identify themselves as members of the queer community often find themselves swinging back and forth between the socially accepted norms of a “conventional family” and the legal void of their recognition. While on one hand the moral turpitude of Indian social terrain brackets sexual intercourse before marriage as a taboo, on the other hand we recognise consensual sexual intercourse between members of the same sex and yet blackball their right to marry. It is not fair to use the text of the law as a weapon against non-traditional families. Singlehood, as a result of legal and social lacunae hammers the anvil of constitutional tenets of justice, equity and good conscience. Thus, the nucleus of the paper aims to magnify the deficiencies in the current socio-legal regime by identifying the roadblocks placed in the paths of the queer community to palliate their singlehood. The researchers aim to suggest the modus operandi to fill in the void in our legislative framework, that would not only extend them legal recognition, but also disentangle the social prejudice. This article is a tool to enlighten the readers about the missing pieces in the jigsaw puzzle of the constitutionally promised norms of equality.