Dear Reader,
Today, December 10, 2023, is World Human Rights Day, and we believe there is no better day to launch our initiative. For Hues of Pride aims to combat mis and disinformation about the LGBTQIA+ community in India by empowering people with access to right information.
I have spent more than two decades covering the queer community in India. And I have realised that though inherent prejudices and biases may cloud the way a person reports a story, there is also a lack of access to resources, right information, which impact the way a story is reported. This same lack of understanding influences the way in which the community is treated/ regarded by people from other walks of life – be it healthcare professionals, educators, doctors, or government officials.
In April 2023, I attended a TechCamp focussed on combating mis and disinformation, where I met my project partner, Akin Babu Joseph. During the course of our conversation, I proposed starting an initiative that would help the rainbow (LGBTQIA+) community.
The idea of this website/ digital platform had been growing in me for a very long time, all the way back to the early 2000s, when I met ‘Bobby’ (not his real name) in a garden café in Chennai
.
A strapping young man with the eyes of a frightened child – that's how I remember Bobby. Then in his 20s, Bobby, who identified as gay, was on the run from his family, who had taken him to religious places, doctors and finally, a mental health facility on the outskirts of the city in an attempt to “cure” him.
After being heavily sedated, chastised for “sinning” and given electroshock therapy, Bobby finally managed to flee the place, and reached out to me through an activist friend.
I needed to do more groundwork before I could write the story but was also worried for his safety. Though I offered him a place to stay, Bobby refused, and promised to meet me the next day.
I waited, in vain. I never saw Bobby again. I went on to do a story on conversion therapy (an attempt to change a person's sexual orientation or gender identity), revisiting the topic several times over the years. The National Medical Commission (NMC), the apex regulatory body of medical professionals in India, banned conversion therapy in 2022 under the Indian Medical Council (Professional Conduct, Etiquette and Ethics) Regulations, 2002, calling it a “professional misconduct’. But the brutal practice continues.
What Bobby said during our meeting remains with me: “My parents are not bad people. They genuinely believe that I am ‘sick’ and can be ‘cured’ or ‘changed’. If only they, and others like them, had access to correct information and someone in authority would tell them what being ‘gay’ really means.”
And Hues of Pride was born.
This website is meant for everyone -- community members, families, friends, allies, healthcare professionals, government authorities and the media.
I would not have been able to do the articles I have produced over the years without help from members of the rainbow community who opened their hearts and minds to me. Nor could I have taken it to the world without the support of editors who believed in me. All I can say is, "Thank you".
It’s my way of giving back to the community that has trusted me with their lives and stories, and to my journalistic fraternity.
It’s a tribute to the Bobbys of the world.
Love and light,
Priya
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