🏳️‍🌈 Embracing Pride: A Personal Journey into Acceptance and Love

 

Where do I begin with a topic as heavy and complex as this?

For generations, the subject of homosexuality has lived in shadows—whispered in hush-hush tones, cloaked in shame, distorted by prejudice. But things are changing. People are coming out—some with pride, some with hesitation. While many embrace this truth, others still view it through the lens of moral, cultural, or religious judgment.

This blog is not an academic exposition. It is a personal journey—an unfolding of emotion, confrontation, and ultimately, acceptance.

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🌱 It Began with a Question

It started innocently, during a casual car ride with my daughter. True to her nature, she asked one of those challenging, curveball questions:
"What if I marry someone who isn't Hindu?"
Before I could recover from that, she followed with:
"Would you still love me if I were a lesbian?"

My instinct was to ask if she was. She said no, but insisted I treat it as a hypothetical. I dodged it with a vague response: "I don’t answer hypotheticals."

Then she turned serious. She revealed that her cousin—whom we’ve known since childhood—had come out to her as gay and was struggling. She asked if I could support him. It was a big ask. He wasn’t just family—he was also the architect designing our house, someone I interacted with regularly.

I knew I had to step up.

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🚗 The Conversation That Changed Everything

A few days later, we were driving to the construction site when he turned to me and said, “Chikkappa (Uncle), I want to tell you something.” I knew what was coming.

He opened up. Confused, vulnerable, and unsure of how I would react.

Fortunately, I had mentally prepared myself, assured him that I took him seriously. I didn’t act surprised. In fact, I gently reminded him—and myself—that he had always been slightly effeminate, even as a child. This wasn’t a sudden deviation, but a part of who he had always been.

I explained that gender and identity are layered. That, sometimes, it feels like a female soul lives in a male body. And that this is not alien to Indian culture. I referenced stories from Hindu mythology, where same-sex love, gender transformation, and third-gender identities were accepted without stigma. (More on that below.)

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🏠 Within the Family: A Battle for Acceptance

The hardest part wasn’t the conversation—it was what came after.

My wife and I discussed it. Then we involved his parents. As expected, it was painful. There was disbelief, denial, and talk of psychiatrists and hormone treatments.

We chose to seek counselling—not to "fix" him, but to help the family process and accept him.

Acceptance from society was another mountain to climb. There were whispers. Side glances. Unkind jokes. Silent pain. Only a few stood with him—most stood aside.

Eventually, he made a difficult choice. He said: "Chikkappa, acceptance in India—both legally and socially—is uncertain. I want to live somewhere I can be free."

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Finding Freedom in Belgium

I had lived in Belgium and remembered its openness. A country that had a gay prime minister and progressive laws. It felt like the right place for a new beginning.

He applied for a master’s in architecture there—and got in. He graduated, found work, earned citizenship, found love, and recently... he got married.

It was the first gay wedding we ever attended. Celebrated across Belgium, the U.S., and even in a temple in America, with a Kalyanotsava performed by the couple.

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💞 What I’ve Learned

I saw first-hand that true love transcends religion, race, nationality, language—and yes, gender too.

It made me look deeper into my own cultural heritage. Here’s what I found:

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📖 Hindu Mythology and LGBTQ+ Themes

• Bhāgavata Purāṇa: Vishnu becomes Mohini, seduces Shiva—resulting in the birth of Ayyappa (Hari-Hara Putra).

• Kama Sutra: Describes tritīya-prakṛti (third-gender individuals), men who behave like women (kumbhīnāsa), and same-sex desire without moral judgment.

• Mahabharata Cross dressing and Arjuna living as BrihanaLa during the incognito period (Agnaata vaasa). During the Mahabharata war, Aravan, Arjuna’s son agrees to be sacrificed but wishes to marry first. no one wants to marry a doomed person. Krishna becomes Mohini, marries him. After his death, Mohini mourns as a widow. Koovagam Festival (Tamil Nadu) Transgender women (Aravanis) marry Aravan ritually and mourn his loss—a powerful annual LGBTQ+ event celebrated even today in India.

What does that mean?
Our traditions never condemned same-sex love. The shame and stigma came later—through colonial laws and imported puritanism.

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📊 Comparative Lens: India and the United States

Area	India	United States
Ancient cultural roots	Rich in queer stories and tolerance	Restrictive, influenced by Christian theology
Colonial/postcolonial laws	Section 377 caused repression	State-by-state variance until federal reforms
Current legal status	Gay sex legal; marriage not recognized	Gay sex and marriage both legal
Social acceptance	Improving but uneven	Broadly high, especially in urban centres

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🌈 Conclusion: Pride in Our Diversity

I chose to share this story during the celebration of my nephew’s marriage—not just as a family moment, but as a personal awakening.

It’s time we shake off the Victorian prudery left behind by colonial rule. It’s time to reclaim the inclusive spirit of our own traditions. It’s time to open our hearts.

Let us celebrate love—in all its beautiful, diverse forms.

Let us do it with understanding, compassion, and Pride.

My God, Help Me to Survive This Deadly Love , sometimes referred to as the Fraternal Kiss (German: Bruderkuss), is a graffiti painting by Dmitri Vrubel on the eastern side of the Berlin Wall. Painted in 1990, it has become one of the best known pieces of Berlin Wall graffiti art. The painting depicts Leonid Brezhnev and Erich Honecker in a socialist fraternal kiss, reproducing a photograph taken in 1979 during the 30th anniversary celebration of the foundation of the German Democratic Republic.

PC: By Bundesarchiv, B 145 Bild-F088809-0038 / {Creator:Joachim F. Thurn, CC BY-SA 3.0 de, https://commons.wikimedia.org/w/index.php?curid=5473698