In a 'Panic,' Gay Husband Murders Wife; Sentenced to 21 Years

To hear some anti-gay religious types tell it, all gays have to do in order to assimilate into straight society is stop "choosing" their homosexuality, embrace heterosexuality, and marry a person of the opposite gender. Then all their problems would be solved.

This was essentially the course of action a bank worker in Walsall, England opted to try. Instead of magically transforming his life and himself into something wonderfully heterosexual, however, the pretense led to a new twist on "gay panic" and the killing of his new bride, the BBC reported in an April 11 update to a story of family expectations and social pressure gone horribly wrong.

The BBC reported that a 29-year-old man from India, Jasvir Ram Ginday, received a life sentence for killing his wife with a vacuum cleaner pipe after the young bride discovered "compromising" content on his electronic devices. The wife, Varkha Rani, wed Ginday in 2013 in an arranged marriage conducted in India, and joined him in England last summer. When she discovered what her husband had downloaded onto his iPhone and iPad, she responded by threatening to out Ginday. A struggle resulted, and in a moment of what he described as "panic" at the idea of being discovered to be gay by his family, Ginday strangled Rani using the pipe.

After killing Rani, Ginday disposed of her body by burning it. He then claimed that she had left him. A police investigation ensued, and witnesses who saw smoke from an incinerator in Ginday's yard informed the investigating officers. Upon investigating the incinerator, the officers found Rani's remains.

Even as the marriage was being arranged, authorities said, Ginday was involved with men and frequenting gay nightspots. The court heard that Ginday had known for at least five years that he was gay, even though he consented to the arranged marriage. The judge in the case noted that Ginday had lived in the difficult position of "being a gay man in a straight world," the BBC reported. Ginday had pled guilty to manslaughter. He received a 21-year sentence.

The narrative clung to by religious conservatives is that gays can simply abandon their true natures and live contentedly with spouses of the opposite gender if they decide to do so. But that narrative has become increasingly threadbare in recent years: Even notorious "ex-gay" group Exodus International eventually shuttered its doors, with the head of the organization issuing an apology for the way the group had treated gays, promising a "cure" for a condition that is not, medically speaking, pathological, but rather a normal variation of human sexuality.

Not only does credible contemporary science indicate that a person's sexuality is innate and cannot be changed, but research also shows that gays and lesbians, living in a culture that continually barrages them with messages that they should be straight, engage more frequently in risky and self-destructive practices such as smoking and drug use. Advocates of full equality and family parity for gays and lesbians argue that with the rise of marriage equality, negative social attitudes will decline and those problems will diminish. But forcing gays and lesbians to marry people for whom they have little or no romantic attraction will not "cure" their natural sexual orientations.

Research also shows that gays and lesbians living in states where their right to marry has been subjected to political maneuvering and ballot box outcomes suffer higher rates of stress, anxiety, and depression. The flip side is that whenever marriage equality comes to a state, there is a tidal swell in weddings, as same-sex couples rush to claim the legal and social validation that comes with marriage.

Globally, anti-gay legislation has been on the rise in Africa and the former Soviet Union nations. After years of controversy, Uganda approved even stricter anti-gay laws than the ones that had already been on the books; meantime, Russia has led the way among former Soviet nations in imposing draconian homophobic laws. The citizens of these nations, responding to their leadership's legitimization of anti-gay sentiment and conduct, have ramped up anti-gay attacks.

Even in societies where homosexuality is not a crime, but "traditional" marriage roles are enforced through familial and social pressure, gays and lesbians face difficult choices -- not the nature of their sexuality, but whether to lie about it, and how much internal pain and stress to endure in an effort to assimilate. In Ginday and Rani's native India homosexuality was recently re-criminalized after several years of the country's anti-gay laws -- a remnant of British colonial imperialism -- being suspended.

Full marriage equality became legal in Britain earlier this year, but for Ginday and Rani it is too late: The husband, forced into a marriage that was wrong for him from the start, now faces hard jail time, while the wife is dead and her family members describe themselves as "broken."

A police official named Sarbjit Johal told the press, "Ginday got married as a matter of convenience -- he tricked a poor innocent girl into marriage but was living a lie. When she uncovered the truth he could not live with it," while Rani's cousin Sunil Kumar commented, "Varkha attained a masters degree and was driven to make her life a success. Unfortunately she fell prey to Ginday, who had ulterior motives which Varkha would not have appreciated."

An old saying informs us that "honesty is the best policy." Perhaps honesty also makes for more authentic family values.