File photo Singapore’s High Court has dismissed a case by a gay couple who attempted to have the law which bans gay sex thrown out. The rarely-used section 377A of the Singapore Penal Code, introduced when it was under British rule, makes it a crime for men to engage in ‘gross indecency’ with each other, punishing them with up to two years jail. Couple Gary Lim and Kenneth Chee made a claim to the High Court that Section 377A was discriminatory and unconstitutional. In a 92-page judgment, Justice Quentin Loh said the decision on whether to keep the law was best left to Singapore’s Parliament, noting that they had voted to retain it in 2007. He said the ban on gay sex was a “particular long-held social norm” where change was not yet widely demanded, so the court was ‘hard put’ to decide whether to retain or discard it, the Straits Times reports.
Credit: GayNZ.com Daily News staff
First published: Wednesday, 10th April 2013 - 11:42am