#377a

"Singapore will repeal a law that bans gay sex, effectively making it legal to be homosexual in the city-state.

The decision, announced by Prime Minister Lee Hsien Loong on national TV, comes after years of fierce debate.

LGBT activists in Singapore have hailed the move as "a win for humanity".

The city-state is known for its conservative values, but in recent years an increasing number of people have called for the colonial-era 377A law to be abolished.

Singapore is the latest place in Asia to move on LGBT rights, after India, Taiwan and Thailand."

Thousands of Singaporeans showed up in support of the LGBT community at the annual Pink Dot rally on Saturday.

For one day a year, Singapore’s Pink Dot movement throws an elaborate celebration for Pride Month with the goal of providing a safe space for members of the community to express themselves. It took place at Hong Lim Park, the only place in Singapore where political protests can legally be held.

This year, Pink Dot came back with a bang after two years of celebrating online, full of showy performances, placards featuring gripping, heartfelt messages urging change and representatives from a wide array of LGBT community groups and local sponsors.

For many years, one of the community’s greatest struggles has been getting Section 377a, a 1938 law that criminalized sex between men, struck off from the Penal Code. A lawyer at the forefront of this legal battle told Coconuts the importance of getting the law repealed, and discussed what the future holds for LGBT rights in Singapore.

As a lawyer who has been involved in several legal challenges ultimately dismissed by the courts, Remy Choo said his team never gets ahead and keeps its expectations low as they continue to push for lasting change.

“Sometimes, hope is a dangerous thing, so we hope for the best, but we expect the worst,” the 36-year-old told Coconuts on the sidelines of Saturday’s rally. “A lot of us don’t dare to hope, we hoped for a very long time and we’ve seen a lot of false stories.”

Choo has been a part of a group called Ready4Repeal since it was started in 2019 and is part of a legal team that challenged the constitutionality of Section 377A.

Thoughts on the repealing of Penal Code 377A in Singapore. 

After many years of activism, demonstration, education, and court appeals, the parliament of Singapore finally decided to consider the repeal of 377A earlier this year. Today, the members of parliament, after long debates, have voted on the repealing of 377A. 93 for AYE, 3 for NAY, 0 Abstain. 

At first glance, this seems to call for celebrations, but before we cover the streets with rainbow flags, it is important to consider how this is only but a small tokenistic step in the right direction. I could go into analysing the parliamentary debates, the colonial history of 377A, the case study of the (deeply failing and flawed) democracy of Singapore, but emotionally and mentally, I do not think I have the space for such analyses and debates. I may be an academic in my day to day life, but the repeal of 377A and the possibilities and limitations it presents affects me as a person and I want to utilise this space to unpack my personal thoughts on the matter, divorcing my current thoughts from the abstractly theoretical. 

Earlier in this blog, I wrote about 377A and how parliamentary debates and mainstream discourse in Singapore in favour of keeping the penal code has always cited ‘’family values’’ as a key reason. This discourse was not spared from the discussion of repealing 377A. While it seems like there might be cause for celebration with the repeal of 377A, the repeal was also met with commitments from many parliament members to ‘’strengthen the family unit’’. Sure, sex between gay men are no longer illegal but is sexual freedom the only human right they think we are after? If they do think so, they are ridiculously misguided. While the repeal of 377A could potentially battle some previous homophobic stigma of ‘’criminality’’, the notion of ‘’strengthening the family unit’’ implies the queer communities are excluded from ‘’family’’. Back to the discourse on ‘’family values’’, it implies we can’t form and sustain good, loving familial bonds. Even worse, queer people in this discourse are positioned as an opposition against families, as though loving bonds and belonging aren’t also deeply important to us. Surely there should be space to question and challenge the harmful heteronormative norms surrounding the notion of ‘’family’’. 

So I have just watched Hannah Gadsby's Nanette on Netflix (after delightfully getting my brother's account).

What was so wonderful about it was that even though I've already gotten snippets of it through Tumblr GIFs, it still remains so powerful, so tear- and thought-provoking.

Now, India's passed a ruling to banish the colonial-era Section 377a from its laws. 377a criminalises sex between two men. And this country that I live in now, and have already been for something like ten years before I fucked off to London for a degree, has 377a as well, you know, courtesy of the Brits in the last two centuries. India's ruling, together with other catalysts, reignited debate about it - because guess what, for a country that firmly believes itself a first-world country (even though a Certain Interesting Association refuses to recognise it as such), 377a is very much in our books still.

The government does its wishy-washy thing where they say, "Oh, but it's not reinforced!" while refusing to put it down in black-and-white.

(Finding out which country this is is just a google away, fellow friends.)

Certain religious groups have furiously maintained that the law should remain - and I believe judging by the percentages of certain religious groups here, the odds are in their favour, if things should go to a vote. Not that things will go to a public vote anyway. I have never heard of a referendum held here in this part of the world. Weird. Power is all held by old men, usually Chinese and sometimes Indian, in this part of the world.

And it's so... I'm just so tired of the debate. And the opacity of the system. And things are never truly democratic here, even though we are being brainwashed to think we are. There is a pretty large petition going on to repeal 377a. I wish it all the best, even though hopes and wishes are all I can give the petition and my people.

And even then, it's not about a democratic vote here. As Hannah said, it's about not soaking a child in shame. It's about dignity and self-worth. It's about a person's right to be themselves, without harming others.