a puff piece: India's Going to Cure Homosexuality with the Healing Powers of Yoga

You read news stories about homosexual teens committing suicide or being brutally beaten or murdered based off of their sexuality. We as decent, progressive Americans should feel a bit uncomfortable reading that something like this is happening in America, where there are no legal restraints on homosexuality, merely moral ones that dictate that boys and girls should like each other, and that boys should look and act like boys and girls should look and act like girls.

Switch over to India, where there is actually a third gender used to identify boys who dress and act like girls. Here, homosexuality, especially between men, is legally punishable. Specifically in Goa, India, measures are being taken to fix this "problem" in society of men becoming homosexual. They are going to set up treatment centers where counselors are going to help confused young men realize a normal life. They believe these men have never experienced a 'normal' life and that this is the root cause of their confusion. A yoga instructor who will lead one of the centers describes homosexuality as a "bad habit." 

This is very surprising to me. As I mentioned, India has a word for a third gender, hijra, to describe boys who dress and act like girls. The hijra even go through an official ritual in order to be considered a hijra. This seems culturally contradictory to the plans of the Goa government to institute centers to scare boys straight through reminding them of the legal concepts of right and wrong. 

I don't know enough about Indian culture, but from the little I do know, I could see the concern from a heavily family-oriented society for men to marry women. In a society where baby girls are being aborted or abandoned because of the heavy pressure for Indian families to have sons, some families go as far to spin sperm in order to skim the male sperm off the top in order to impregnate wives with the correct gender. I can see how from the eyes of these parents who go to such great lengths to have sons, having a gay son might almost be seen as a waste. This part of the culture makes me understand how treatment centers might be seen as a good idea. 

My one question is, do they know that these centers have come up in America? Their effectiveness is debated and highly ridiculed, and I imagine the same thing will happen in India.

Here's the article.

-Crystal Hartsough