NEW DELHI, Jan. 13 (UPI) -- United Nations Secretary General Ban Ki-moon condemned India's anti-homosexuality laws, just hours after a local official announced plans to establish treatment centers to help gay youths become "normal."
Ban said India's laws criminalizing homosexuality breed intolerance and "violate basic rights to privacy and to freedom of discrimination." He urged the government to pull back laws that criminalize consensual, same-sex relationships.
"I staunchly oppose the criminalization of homosexuality," Ban said. "I speak out because laws criminalizing consensual, adult same-sex relationships violate basic rights to privacy and to freedom from discrimination. Even if they are not enforced, these laws breed intolerance."
Earlier in the day, Ramesh Tawadkar, from the western state of Goa, announced plans to "cure" gay people with training and medicine. Tawadkar later said he was not talking about gays but drug addicts and sexually abused children.
"I was misunderstood and misquoted," Tawadkar said.
In 2009, the Delhi High Court struck down a law that criminalized "carnal intercourse against the order of nature," but the country's Supreme Court overturned the verdict.
