The Court’s Global Message on DOMA

BALTIMORE â€" LAST week’s Supreme Court decision to strike down the core provisions of the Defense of Marriage Act is a stride toward greater equality in the United States. But it is also a shift that will reverberate far beyond our shores. America has always been a beacon for those unable to live a life of liberty in their homelands, and the ruling sends a strong signal of encouragement to such individuals, and to their governments, about what we consider fair and morally acceptable.

In 1979, as I waited in line to enter the United States for the first time, I was fairly certain I was gay. When I was growing up in Mumbai, homosexuality was invisible â€" I hadn’t met a single person like myself in my 20 years there. America, to me, offered a ray of hope through my despair: I’d detected incontrovertible evidence of gay life in its magazines and films.

Now I stood at the threshold, being asked by the uniformed gatekeeper to state my business. I handed over my I-20 form: proof I’d come to pursue an advanced mathematics degree and nothing else. Then I was through, into the promised land.

Gazing back at my almost three and a half decades here, I see a life filled with opportunity and freedom. Yes, there were years of furtiveness, of sleepless nights wondering if I’d be sent back. But also the time and space I needed to explore and ease into my identity, the ability to live openly with the person I love for 23 years (and counting). And with this ruling comes the affirmation of what first attracted me to this country: its promise of fairness and equality.

How would my life have played out had I stayed in India? Would I have used marriage as a cover, as a sizable majority of Indian homosexuals still do? Or would I have helped usher in the nascent queer scene, more visible since the High Court for the State of Delhi struck down anti-sodomy laws in 2009? The Indian Supreme Court will soon decide on the Delhi ruling â€" the kind of situation where the American ruling could have an international impact. While the Indian judiciary is fiercely independent, the fact remains that America carries enormous moral and cultural clout in the world.

Several nations considering the recognition of same-sex unions (from Bolivia to Vietnam) will receive this amicus curiae signal. Homophobic states like Nigeria will be served a further reminder of how radically they diverge from our principles of fairness.

A number of anti-homosexual statutes that exist today, including those in India, derive from the same source: English common law. This illustrates the tremendous worldwide influence a single legal precept can have.

America is not the first to propose an alternative precept, reversing centuries of such discrimination. But it has worked hard to project its image of supporting freedom, and its voice will carry the strongest. DOMA’s repudiation will burnish this image, and the effects will be felt by sexual minorities growing up alone and in despair all over the globe.

Manil Suri, a mathematics professor at the University of Maryland, Baltimore County, is the author, most recently, of the novel “The City of Devi.”

A version of this op-ed appeared in print on July 1, 2013, on page A23 of the New York edition with the headline: The Court’s Global Message on DOMA.