The law, which was no longer applied, provided for a maximum sentence of two years’ imprisonment. His repeal “puts the legislation in agreement with the evolution of mentalities”, said the Prime Minister, Lee Hsien Loong, at the end of August.
MO12345LEMONDE with AFP
The Singapore parliament revoked, Tuesday, November 29, a law penalizing sexual intercourse between men dating from the colonial era. This discriminatory and stigmatizing law provided for a maximum sentence of two years’ imprisonment, but was no longer applied.
The Singaporean Parliament, however, also modified the local constitution to specify that a marriage could only be the union of a man and a woman, preventing the same sex couples from obtaining equality for marriage.
The Prime Minister of Cité-etat, Lee Hsien Loong, announced this repeal at the end of August. “I believe that is the right thing to do and something that most Singaporeans will now accept,” he said during a speech. The Prime Minister estimated that the situation had changed compared to 2007, when the authorities had decided to keep this law.
At the time, the legislation had been reformed for the first time, raising the ban only on relations between women and sodomy between heterosexuals . Homosexual men “are today much more accepted,” in Singapore, the Prime Minister underlined in the summer. The repeal of the law “will put the legislation in accordance with the evolution of mentalities”, had still estimated Lee Hsien Loong.
The law, a vestige of the British colonial regime, provided for a maximum sentence of two years’ imprisonment for homosexual acts. It is not applied in fact, but the defenders of the rights of homosexuals claim that it always deprives the members of the gay community of their rights, despite the increasingly modern culture of the city-state.