New Delhi: The Supreme Court on Friday, January 6, transferred all petitions pending before various high courts seeking legal recognition of same-sex marriage to itself, in response to petitioners’ plea for an “authoritative pronouncement on the issue”, The Hindu reported.A three-judge bench of Chief Justice D.Y. Chandrachud, Justice P.S. Narasimha, and Justice J.B. Pardiwala ordered the Union government to file its response to the petitions by February 15 besides directing all petitions on the matter be placed before it by March.On November 25, 2022, the apex court had sought the government’s response to pleas requesting to allow the solemnisation of same-sex marriage under the Special Marriage Act. Enacted in 1954, the SMA facilitates marriages of couples professing different faiths and preferring a civil wedding, as they cannot marry under their personal laws. The law in question does not cover same-sex couples.The government in response to petitions had said any changes to the existing law on marriage to recognise same-sex marriage would cause “complete havoc with the delicate balance of personal laws in the country”, rejecting the pleas for change to cover same-sex couples.In 2018, the Supreme Court decriminalised homosexuality and apologised to the LGBTQ+ community to forgive history for their “brutal” suppression. A five-judge constitutional bench back then had observed that criminalisation of private consensual sexual conduct between adults of the same sex under Section 377 of the Indian Penal Code was clearly unconstitutional. The court declared that 156-year-old “tyranny” of Section 377 as “irrational, indefensible and manifestly arbitrary”. Section 377 punished homosexuality with a 10-year imprisonment.