Asia-Pacific

Indian health minister terms homosexuality as 'disease'

(Xinhua)
Updated: 2011-07-05 14:27

NEW DELHI - Indian Health Minister Ghulam Nabi Azad has said that homosexuality is a "disease" which was "spreading fast" in the country, local media reported Tuesday.

"Even though it (homosexuality) is unnatural, it exists in our country and is now fast spreading, making it tough to detect it. With relationships changing, men are having sex with men now," said the minister.  

"Though it is easy to find women sex workers and educate them on sex, it is a challenge to identify men having sex with men," the Health Minister was quoted as saying at a meeting on HIV and Aids in the national capital Monday.

The minister's remarks came despite the Supreme Court decriminalized gay sex in the country in a landmark judgement in 2009, overturning a 148-year-old colonial law which described same-sex relationship as an "unnatural offense."