On this day · archive
The law steps out of private life
On September 6, 2018, India’s Supreme Court struck down the reach of Section 377 over consensual sex between adults in private. The ruling changed the law at once; the work of equality remained larger than a single judgment.
8
events in todayish file
2018
India’s Supreme Court decriminalizes consensual sex between adults in private.
A unanimous ruling placed dignity, privacy, and equality above a colonial-era prohibition that had reached into the most personal part of life.
The Supreme Court of India’s ruling in Navtej Singh Johar v. Union of India was unanimous. On September 6, 2018, the five-judge bench held that Section 377 could no longer criminalize consensual sexual conduct between adults in private.
The judgment mattered both in law and in language. It treated sexual orientation as part of individual dignity and placed constitutional rights against a colonial-era statute long used to mark LGBTQ people as criminals.
A court can remove a prohibition; it cannot erase every prejudice that grew around it. The decision nevertheless changed the ground beneath millions of lives, making the date a legal milestone and a public declaration that privacy does not diminish citizenship.
The full record
8 entries from the day’s archive, filed year by year with a note on what each one leaves behind.
Boris Johnson resigns as prime minister of the United Kingdom and is replaced by Liz Truss.
Their separate meetings with Queen Elizabeth II at Balmoral become her final official duties before her death two days later.
Politics
Ukraine begins its Kharkiv counteroffensive, surprising Russian forces and rapidly retaking territory.
Within a week, Ukrainian forces recapture more than 3,000 square kilometers and the part of Kharkiv Oblast west of the Oskil River.
War
India’s Supreme Court decriminalizes consensual sex between adults in private.
The unanimous Section 377 ruling becomes a landmark for privacy, dignity, and LGBTQ rights in India.
Rights
The first Minotaur V rocket launches from Wallops Island carrying NASA’s LADEE spacecraft.
The mission begins its journey to study the Moon’s thin atmosphere and the dust near its surface.
Space
Poachers poison 41 elephants with cyanide in salt pans at Hwange National Park.
The killings leave a stark record of the scale and cruelty of wildlife trafficking in Zimbabwe’s largest national park.
Wildlife
A fishing boat capsizes off Turkey’s İzmir Province coast, killing 61 people.
The capsizing near the Greek Aegean islands killed 61 people and left families facing a sudden maritime disaster.
Disaster
The ferry SuperFerry 9 sinks off the Zamboanga Peninsula with 971 people aboard.
Rescuers save all but ten of those aboard, making the scale of survival as notable as the sinking.
Disaster
Israel carries out Operation Orchard, an air strike that destroys a nuclear reactor in Syria.
The strike adds a covert and consequential episode to the region’s history of military confrontation.
War