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Singapore will not allow same-sex marriage even as it proposes to repeal a law criminalizing sex between gay men, Prime Minister Lee Hsien Loong announced on Sunday.
The government plans to amend the country’s constitution to limit its 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, such as eligibility for public housing and adoption. LGBTQ activists in the Southeast Asian country have long derided the system as discriminatory, and some now fear enshrining the definition of marriage will entrench it.
Titled “Outrages against decency”, section 377A makes sex between men punishable by up to two years in prison.
Rights activists describe the colonial-era penal code section as archaic, discriminatory and contributing to social stigma by criminalizing members of the LGBTQ community.
“Section 377A relegates our gay friends and family to second-class citizenship by pointing out that what they do, and who they are, is reprehensible and wrong,” says the Ready 4 Repeal organization’s website.
Singapore’s Court of Appeal in February ruled that 377A was unenforceable, based on the decision that the law would remain on the books but authorities would not “proactively enforce” it, as it said Lee in 2007. It would have been “too divisive” to decide anything else, Lee said Sunday, leaving the nation with this “messy compromise” for years.
Still, the law occupies an important role in the public discourse on LGBTQ issues, and has strong symbolic meaning for activists, many of whom had campaigned against it for generations.
“This took many people, for decades … we come together today to savor this moment,” Harpreet Singh, a lawyer who helped file a constitutional challenge to 377A in 2019, told The Washington Post on Sunday.
Oogachaga, an LGBTQ community organization in Singapore, said it was “relieved and hopeful” to learn of the repeal. This may “be an opportunity to start healing the wounds 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 he “deeply regrets” that the removal of the law must be accompanied by additional protections to the government’s definition of marriage.
“These suggested constitutional changes will discriminate against LGBTQ families and associations who make important 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, lobbied strongly in recent weeks for the government to add protections to the traditional definition of marriage.
In a televised speech, Lee characterized the government’s twofold decision as a compromise that would allow the country to “maintain our current family and social norms.”
“In general, Singapore is a traditional society, with conservative social values,” Lee said. “Therefore, even if we repeal 377A, we will maintain and safeguard 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 these challenges by amending the constitution.
The courts are not the “appropriate forum” to decide the issue, he said. “Judges and courts have neither the expertise nor the mandate to resolve political issues and rule on social norms and values, because fundamentally these are not legal issues, but political issues,” Lee added.
The constitutional change “will deliver what I think most Singaporeans still want, which is to keep the basic family structure of marriage between a man and a woman,” he said, without elaborating on any specifics.
A 2022 Ipsos survey reported increasingly positive attitudes among Singaporeans towards same-sex marriage. Almost 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.