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Gay sex is legal in India. That was the judgement of the the Supreme Court in New Delhi Thursday, which struck down a colonial-era law that banned homosexual acts with the threat of prison. The ruling sparked jubilant scenes across the country, the culmination of a decades-long struggle for India’s LGBTQ movement.

The landmark ruling from the five judge bench overturned the 157-year-old law known as Section 377, which banned sex “against the order of nature.”

The court ruled unanimously that the law amounted to discrimination on the grounds of sexual orientation, and constituted a fundamental violation of rights.

“Sexual orientation is one of the many natural phenomena,” said Chief Justice Dipak Misra in his decision. “Any discrimination on basis of sexual orientation amounts to violation of fundamental rights.”

“Criminalizing carnal intercourse is irrational, arbitrary and manifestly unconstitutional."

The ruling represents a long-awaited victory for the LGBTQ community, which has waged a tortuous battle to legalize homosexuality in recent decades. Cases were filed to repeal the law in 1994 and 2001, before the Delhi High Court finally ruled in favor of decriminalization within its jurisdiction in 2009.

But conservative religious and political groups immediately pushed back, lobbying for the law to be restored; in 2013 the Supreme Court unexpectedly overturned the earlier judgment.

The 2013 ruling stated that because Section 377 had been used so infrequently, and because only a “minuscule fraction of the country's population constitute lesbians, gays, bisexuals or transgenders,” the law couldn’t be considered to violate Indians’ constitutional rights and it was therefore “legally unsustainable” to repeal it.

That reasoning baffled and dismayed LGBTQ activists, who filed a petition to overturn the decision, resulting in Thursday’s judgment — which represents the final say in the matter.

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