Out in the World: Singapore high court rules to keep law criminalizing gays
Singapore's top court has punted the country's law criminalizing gay sex to parliament in a decision that activists called a "partial victory."In a February 28 news release, the Human Dignity Trust stated that while the court reinforced a moratorium on the arrest of gay men engaging in consensual, same-sex sexual activity, it fell short of removing a discriminatory criminalizing law from the statute books.Chief Justice Sundaresh Menon stated on behalf of the five-judge panel in its 152-page decision that the court was not "a front-runner for social change or an architect of social policy."The justice stated it was "a matter beyond our remit." The appeal court was the last legal stop for the case, Tan Seng Kee v.
Attorney General, in Singapore's courts. Hopes for decriminalization now rest with the country's parliament.The case was brought in 2018 by a trio of gay activists challenging Section 377A's constitutionality and appealed the high court's 2020 ruling.Plaintiffs Johnson Ong Ming, 45, a disc jockey; Bryan Choong, 44, former executive director of Oogachaga, an LGBTQ mental health, social services, and education organization; and Dr.
Roy Tan Seng Kee, 62, a retired general practitioner were inspired by positive developments in India.India's supreme court struck down Section 377, a similar British colonial-era law, in September 2018.The combined cases in Singapore were the gay activists' third attempt to strike down the law that criminalizes acts of "gross indecency" between men in the Southeast Asian island country.The British colonial-era law enacted in 1938 criminalizes consensual sex between two men and "any man who abets, procures or attempts to procure such an act." The law applied to straight couples and women.
