Singapore’s highest court on Wednesday dismissed a constitutional challenge to an archaic law criminalizing sex between men, striking a blow to the city-state’s growing gay rights movement. The Court of Appeal upheld rulings by lower courts that it was up to Parliament to repeal the provision in the penal code, known as Section 377A.
“Whilst we understand the deeply held personal feelings of the appellants, there is nothing that this court can do to assist them,” judges Andrew Phang (潘文龍), Belinda Ang (洪素燕) and Woo Bih Li (吳必理) said in a written verdict.
The ruling addressed two separate challenges to the law. One was by Tan Eng Hong (陳英健), who was arrested after being caught with a male partner in a public toilet cubicle in 2010, while the other was filed by a gay couple.
The judges said they considered “legal arguments,” not “extra-legal considerations and matters of social policy, which were outside the remit of the court.”
According to the judges, examples of extra-legal arguments put forward by the appellants’ lawyers included that Section 377A represented “the tyranny of the majority” and that the sexual conduct of their clients caused no harm to others. However, judges said such arguments were not for the courts to consider.
In a statement, Tan’s lawyer M. Ravi said the judgement was a “huge step backwards for human rights in Singapore.”
Ravi added that it was “disturbing [that] the Supreme Court has now thrown this issue back to Parliament, when other Commonwealth countries have struck down this legislation as discriminatory and [an] absurd relic of the colonial past.”
Section 377A, first introduced in 1938 by the British, carries a maximum penalty of two years in jail for homosexual acts.
The law states: “Any male person who, in public or private, commits, or abets the commission of, or procures or attempts to procure the commission by any male person of, any act of gross indecency with another male person, shall be punished with imprisonment for a term which may extend to 2 years.”
Although Section 377A is not actively enforced, the government has said it should stay on the books because most Singaporeans are conservative and do not accept homosexuality.
A survey conducted by researchers at Singapore’s Nanyang Technological University in 2010 and published last year found Singaporeans’ views toward homosexuality gradually becoming more positive compared to attitudes in 2005. The study found religion a major factor determining attitudes toward homosexuals, with Muslims and Christians being the most negative.
The Lesbian, Gay, Bisexual and Transgender rights movement is growing steadily in Singapore, one of the world’s wealthiest and most modern cities.
More than 20,000 people gathered in a peaceful rally supporting gay rights in June last year, despite a fierce online campaign against the event by conservative Muslims and Christians.
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