In India, economic reasons behind recent gay sex decriminalisation

The Malayan

In India, economic reasons behind recent gay sex decriminalisation

Alistaire Opinion  September 9, 2018 4 Minutes

By Shahid Bolsen

The decision by the world’s largest democracy (i.e. India) to legalise gay sex was not made democratically.  The majority of India’s citizens do not approve.  For some reason, that is not supposed to matter.  The same was true when same sex marriage was legalised in the US; the majority opposed it; but again, that is not supposed to matter, because… reasons.

So how does a radical fringe minority in the society exert such an irresistible influence over governments?  How does a fraction of a fraction of the population (LGBT activists) bend policy to their will?  The answer is that they don’t.

The LGBT agenda has not been successful because of gay and trans activists.  The corporate sector has been ahead of the curve and pushed the envelope on the LGBT issue, not activists.  To some degree, accepting and promoting the gay lifestyle makes business sense.

In the US alone, the LGBT community is estimated to wield around $800 billion in buying power.  And, let’s be honest, normalizing homosexuality will spread homosexuality, and spreading homosexuality is reliably going to result in spreading HIV.  As we have all learned over the past few years, HIV is no longer a death sentence but rather it is a life sentence of dependence on a cocktail of medications.

The gay community is something of a captive market for drug companies, one which these companies have every reason to want to see grow.  Each new HIV infection calculates to roughly $17,100 profit growth per year.  Globally, there were well over one million new infections last year.

The same capitalist principle applies to transgenderism:- encouraging male-to-female or female-to-male transformations is encouraging lifelong dependence on hormone treatments. Gender reassignment surgery costs around $30,000, with hormone therapy coming in at about $1500 per year.  And that’s just for starters.  Facial feminization treatment, breast implants, and so on, all run in the tens of thousands of dollars.  Each gender transition represents well over $100,000 per person, plus ongoing hormone injections; usually paid out of pocket.

If transgenderism is normalised, it will begin to be covered by insurance; which will undoubtedly encourage those considering transitioning, but who cannot afford it, to go ahead and do it.  Normalising it creates customers not only for Big Pharma, but for insurers.

Over 90% of Fortune 500 companies voluntarily implemented policies that accommodated LGBT employees well before same sex marriage was legalised and well before gay rights became the cause célèbre it is today.  And it is no mystery why.  The LGBT agenda is a good investment.

In today’s world, the flow of social change first appears in the corporate sector, then there is change in legislation and lastly and more slowly, there is change in societal attitudes because the change has been normalised by the two centers of power in society.  This appears to be what happened in India.

Laurus Labs, a pharmaceutical company in Andhra Pradesh, India, is one of the world’s biggest suppliers of ingredients for anti-retrovirals used in HIV medicine.  They received FDA approval earlier this year for their own finished drugs, and are poised to flood the US market with a product estimated to be up to 93% cheaper than other branded HIV medications.

Within six months of FDA approval, gay sex in India was decriminalised, thereby creating more profit potential for Laurus Labs domestically, without the cost of exportation.  You can read it as the US pharmaceutical industry protecting their American market share by opening an alternative for their competitor closer to home, perhaps.

Juxtapose this with the announcement that the government of Narendra Modi, a neoliberal from way back, plans to undertake a major overhaul in the cost control policy for medications in India next year.  Intuitively, one can surmise  that whatever Modi has in mind, it will primarily benefit local pharmaceutical companies, like Laurus Labs, as well as insurance firms.

LGBT activists frequently claim that criminalisation of homosexuality impedes the battle against HIV.  They have positioned legalization of gay sex as a positive public health stance and it isn’t surprising.  The LGBT movement has received upwards of $400 million in funding, much of it from donors connected to the pharmaceutical industry. It may well be true that criminalisation of gay sex creates obstacles for seeking treatment, and seeking treatment is precisely what Big Pharma wants people to do as that is how they make money.

But it is also true that normalization of gay sex creates more HIV infections insofar as it tends to spread homosexuality.  Since the legalization of gay marriage in the United Kingdom, for example, the number of self-identifying homosexuals rose from 1.7% of the population to over 2% in just one year; with some estimating that the real figure could be as high as 10% today.  Homosexuality has risen most dramatically among the young, the demographic group at the highest risk of contracting HIV.  In business language, this is called “market expansion”.

For those who adhere to traditional values, and who would like to stem the spread of homosexuality, it is important to realise the economic interests behind the LGBT advancements, and strategise appropriately.

* Shahid Bolsen blogs on Islamic issues. The above article  is reproduced from his blog for the benefit of Malaysian readers and has no relation whatsoever toThe Malayan in any way.