Sexual minority rights activists in Singapore have filed an appeal in court to overturn the country’s ban on sex between men. Reported by the South China Morning Post.
This is the third attempt to get rid of the law. This time a professional activist, a doctor and a DJ are fighting for this: in 2019 they filed a complaint with the court, but it was rejected. According to the authors of the initiative, the legislative norm known as “Section 377A” does not correspond to modern realities and violates the constitutional rights of citizens.
A law dating back to 1938 and dating back to the time when Singapore was a colony of the British Empire, punishment of up to two years in prison for men convicted of homosexual intercourse. The last time they refused to change it in 2014.
As the newspaper notes, Singaporean lawmakers remain conservative, like the majority of the population – so you shouldn’t wait for the ban to be lifted.
In other parts of Asia, this issue is also on the agenda: in Muslim countries such as Myanmar, Malaysia, Indonesia and Brunei, harsh punishments of homosexual men are carried out. At the same time, India lifted the ban on sex between men in 2018, and Taiwan became the first Asian state to legalize same-sex marriage in the same year.