The organizers behind Cleveland’s 19th annual gay-pride fest are giving themselves a collective high-five for counting a record 7,500 homos at the Cruising for Pride on Saturday afternoon. But don’t expect Sanjaya Patel and his bride to send home postcards about it to their native India.
Earlier in the day, the Patels were spending the start of their honeymoon by strolling down Lakeside Avenue. They snapped pictures of each other in front of Cleveland City Hall and the Free Stamp before lunching at the Galleria at Erieview. As they walked out of the Key West Café, the couple grew curious about the parade marching toward Voinovich Park. So they joined the stroll. “I thought it was a neighborhood block party,” says the 27-year-old Patel.
If festival volunteers handing out rainbow-colored leis at the gate didn’t give the Patels a clue, Doria Roberts certainly did. On the fest’s main stage, the lesbian rocker-activist sang about gay marriage. The couple blushed. Sexual fruitiness is considered taboo in India. Its anti-sodomy law even says that offenders can be thrown into prison for the rest of their lives, although no one has been arrested in the last 20 years. “Homosexuality is never discussed in public,” says Patel. “Relationships among men are kept under wraps.”
Just then, two dudes walked past, hand-in-hand. It’s a sight he expects to see more often when he starts law school at Cleveland State in the fall. And he won’t be surprised if the class syllabus includes the gay-marriage debate. “It’s been interesting to watch Canada adopt laws to allow gays to marry each other,” says Patel. “But there would not be much appreciation for a law like that in India.” – Cris Glaser
This article appears in Jun 13-19, 2007.
Dear Sanjaya,
If you need help packing to go back where you came from, I could round up some buddies who would be more than happy to help. I know you’re used to hanging around with blue, six-armed elephant heads but when it comes to purging homophobic foreigners we can accomplish a lot with two hands and a boot in the ass. P.S.: If you decide to stay, PLEASE adopt a strictly American diet.
If you don’t like it, Sanjaya, go back home.
Why do we give a shit what this unenlightened d-bag has to think??
And is his name REALLY Sanjaya?? Wow.
This guy is just getting exposed to something he hasn’t seen before. That’s one of the benefits of traveling the world. You see new things that hopefully get you to open up your view of the world.
You can be unhappy with his reaction to his first gay pride parade, but why respond with xenophobic/racist rhetoric? It’s just fighting ignorance of sexual diversity with more ignorance of cultural diversity.
Dear Smell Ya later, DealWithIt and Sanjaya,
My name is Aniruddha, a Koti (effeminate gay male, it is an indigenous identity) writing from West Bengal, India. I don’t know about Sanjaya or the Patels’ reaction to gay pride, but here in India we do have pride weeks, film festivals, “love” parades, and many voices of resistances, both ‘westernised’ and ‘indigenous’, both elite and lower-class. So this representation of India as a unifromly closeted country is at bst a stereotype, at worst a xenophobic and dismissive attitude regarding so-called “un-enlightened” country. And what IS “India” anyway? The Govt? The people in power? Don’t we who are resisting have every right to be considered a part of “Indian” culture as well?? Just as the US can’t be synonymous with only those right-wingers opposing gay marriage.
Mr. Patel, How do you know there would not be an appreciation for a gay marriage law in India? Have you checked with the millions of gay people living on the margins of the Indian society? Do you think they don’t deserve the same rights as everyone else? The right to marry the one they love, to be by their bedside when they’re dying? Imagine you love someone all your life, be with them and when they’re in hospital you can’t be by their side because you’re not family?
You have come here to study law, right? All people are supposed to be equal under the law but please remember – there is a community of lesbians, gays, bisexuals, transgendered and queer folks that don’t get the same treatment under the law. They are considered criminals under sec 377 of the Indian penal code just for being who they are!
THINK ABOUT THAT!