Comment Singapore will not allow gay marriage even as it moves to repeal a law that criminalizes sex between gay men, Prime Minister Lee Hsien Loong announced on Sunday. The government plans to amend the country’s constitution to narrow the definition of marriage between a man and a woman and protect that definition from legal challenge. Marital status is linked to many social policies in Singapore, including eligibility for public housing and adoption. LGBTQ activists in the Southeast Asian country have long derided this system as discriminatory, and some now fear that enshrining the definition of marriage will entrench it. Titled “Outrages of decency”, section 377A states that sex between men is punishable by up to two years in prison. Rights activists describe the colonial-era section of the penal code as archaic, discriminatory and contributing to social stigma by labeling members of the LGBTQ community as criminals. “Section 377A relegates our gay friends and relatives to second-class citizenship by suggesting that what they are doing, and who they are, is reprehensible and wrong,” says the Ready 4 Repeal website. Singapore’s Court of Appeal in February ruled that 377A was unenforceable — ruling that the law would be kept on the books but authorities would not “proactively apply it,” as Lee said in 2007. It would be “too divisive” to decide anything else, Lee said on Sunday, leaving the nation with this “messy compromise” for years. However, the law holds an important role in the public debate on LGBTQ issues, carrying a strong symbolic meaning for activists, many of whom have fought against it for generations. “This has taken so many people, for decades … today we are together to enjoy this moment,” Harpreet Singh, a lawyer who helped mount a constitutional challenge to 377A in 2019, told the Washington Post on Sunday. Oogachaga, a Singaporean LGBTQ community organization, said it was “relieved and hopeful” to learn of the repeal. This may “be an opportunity to begin to heal the traumas that have occurred,” he said. Section 377A has caused “immeasurable pain and suffering” to LGBTQ people in the country, said Jean Chong, co-founder of Sayoni, a queer rights organization in Singapore. Chong said she was “deeply saddened” that the repeal of the law must be accompanied by additional protections to the government’s definition of marriage. “These proposed constitutional changes will discriminate against LGBTQ families and partnerships who make significant contributions to Singapore’s economy and society,” Chong said. Religious groups in Singapore, including the Roman Catholic Archdiocese of Singapore and an alliance of Christian organizations, have strongly advocated in recent weeks for the government to add safeguards to the traditional definition of marriage. In a televised speech, Lee characterized the government’s two-pronged decision as a compromise that would allow the country to “maintain our current family and social standards.” “In general, Singapore is a traditional society, with conservative social values,” Lee said. “So even as we repeal 377A, we will uphold and preserve the institution of marriage.” Several dozen countries have legalized same-sex marriage, according to the Pew Research Center. Some of them, such as the United States and Taiwan, did so after constitutional challenges. Lee said in his speech that his government wants to avoid such challenges by amending the constitution. The courts are not the “correct forum” to decide the matter, he said. “Judges and courts have neither the expertise nor the mandate to sort out political issues and decide social norms and values - because fundamentally these are not legal problems, but political issues,” Lee added. The constitutional change will “keep what I think most Singaporeans want, and that is to keep the basic family structure of marriage between a man and a woman,” he said, without elaborating. A 2022 poll by Ipsos reported increasingly positive attitudes among Singaporeans about same-sex marriage. Nearly 50 percent of all respondents said they were more accepting of same-sex relationships than they were three years ago. Rebecca Tan in Thailand contributed to this report.
