Sunil Babu Pant should be hailed to be courageous enough to announce that he is a gay and win election in a relatively conservative Nepali society. Now, he is representing the minority community in the Constituently Assembly (CA). Pant, 36, a computer engineer by training, won CA election from Gorkha district. He is one of the five CA members representing CPN(U), a small communist party.

Apart from being a CA member he is in LGBT (lesbian gay bisexual transgender) rights group in Blue Diamond Society, a society representing gay/bisexual people in Nepal.

If Pant is to be believed, he is not the only gay member in the parliament. He claims to know at least five more gay/lesbian members, personally.

With a notion that every human being should be treated equally, irrespective of their sexual inclination, Pant is fighting to ensure such provision is included in the new constitution. Pant knows that he is on a long, uphill battle for the “Third Gender, which comprises roughly 10 percent of the total population.”  Pant would be considered successful if the language of the new constitution does not discriminate against the sexual minorities.

The Supreme Court of Nepal, last year, delivered full judgment regarding a ground-breaking verdict it had announced the previous year, recognizing sexual minorities as being born such and entitled to all the rights and remedies all other Nepali citizens enjoyed. “My eyes were filled with tears when I read the Supreme Court decision,” said Sunil Babu Pant at that time.

The people in the sexual minorities group are not there by choice but are born such and should be entitled to all the rights others enjoy. We wish all the best to Pant for his noble quest.