For Singapore’s Gay Men, Repeal of Sex Ban Brings Hope After Years of Pain
The government confirmed that it would get rid of the colonial-era law, but said it would also move to protect the definition of marriage from being challenged in court.
A gay bar in Singapore on Thursday, after the government announced it would repeal a law banning consensual sex between men.Credit...Ore Huiying for The New York Times
Dr. Roy Tan remembers the fear of being a gay man in Singapore in the 1980s and 1990s. Having consensual sex with another man was punishable by imprisonment. Undercover police officers would chat up unsuspecting gay men in quiet parks and beaches, wait for them to suggest sex, then swoop in and make an arrest.
“There was always this Damocles sword hanging over my head that I would be caught by the police,” said Dr. Tan, 63, a part-time general practitioner. “So it did affect my life growing up in my early adulthood a very great deal, as it did for many other gay Singaporeans.”
Last week, Singapore’s prime minister, Lee Hsien Loong, spoke the words that Dr. Tan and thousands of other gay men have been waiting to hear for decades: The governmentwould repeal Section 377A, a colonial-era law banning consensual sex between men. (The law does not apply to women.)
