The Supreme Court in 2018 issued a landmark judgment, wherein section 377 of the Indian Penal Code, which criminalized unnatural sex against the order of nature, was read down to the extent it criminalised sexual actions between consenting adults. The judgment marked a victory for queer politics and rights of queer persons in India, especially given the long and continued struggle leading up to it. However, more than a year since the judgement, a critical analysis of the principles upheld and the manner in which these principles have been transposed (or rather, ignored) in public policy merits equal discussion. Of importance here, is the ‘innateness’ approach to sexual orientation, which formed the foundation for the unanimous judgment passed by the bench, as this construct seeks to stabilise and essentialise queer identities. The translation of this construct into gender identity legislations such as the Transgender Persons (Protection of Rights) Act, 2019 and bills such as the Personal Data Protection Bill, 2018 is also worrying. The effect, of an ‘innateness’ approach to identity being codified into legislations, is to silo identities into neatly segregated and essentialised categories that can be easily ‘watched’ and protected as ‘data’, as opposed to individuals proclaiming and performing these identities being granted equal recognition before the law.