Imagine your life without a cell phone or PDA. Ask anyone who’s lost theirs and they’ll tell you that they felt out of touch while they were without their mobile device. Now imagine your life without the Internet, toothpaste, or transportation. Literally everything we have today, as a species, we were once without. All of these things that are now considered necessities are only that because they’ve become mainstream, a part of everyday life.
While the acceptance of the LGBT community has grown considerably in just the last decade, we still have a ways to go. Rose Venkatesan, India's first transgender TV anchor and celebrity, realized that the quickest way to reach widespread acceptance was through the media.
Her show, “Yours, Rose,” reaches an audience of 64 million people in the southern state of Tamil Nadu and covered topics ranging from divorce to sexuality, but in a family-friendly manner. Often called India’s Oprah, Rose, a poised, 30-year-old, American-educated former Web site designer with a master’s degree in biomedical engineering, has been garnering more and more acceptance for transgendered people in India.
Proof that her show might be turning the tides? Well, she’s just now getting set to produce and direct her own show, “This is Rose Hour.” But even more so, the Delhi High Court recently made a historic judgment on Section 377, decriminalizing homosexuality. "I think now the Delhi High Court has clearly made it a point and stated that these people are also humans and they also deserve the same kinds of rights as other people," she said.
A big step for a country that banned television channels that showed “too much skin,” and has fringe political groups that like nothing better than to stir up raucous (and often fake) outbursts of moral outrage.
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