Bollywood makes a lesbian rom-com, a transgender woman bags a key opposition party post and judges green light same-sex couples living together – just some of the groundbreaking firsts since India legalised gay sex four months ago. But the largely conservative country is far from accepting and giving equal rights to LGBT+ people, experts said, despite the top court’s September repeal of Section 377, introduced during British rule more than a century-and-a-half ago. “It is the beginning of a long and arduous struggle and not the culmination. Do we have adoption, spousal or inheritance rights?” said senior journalist Sunil Mehra, one of the petitioners in the Supreme Court against Section 377.