Gay Rights in Singapore...

[Scott]

It would appear that the situation in Singapore is not particularly good for gays:

Gay rights in Singapore On permanent parole

A FOUR-YEAR battle ended yesterday, when Singapore's highest court upheld the constitutionality of Section 377(a) of the country's penal code, which renders any man convicted of committing "or abet[ting] the commission of...any act of gross indecency" with another man liable to two years in prison. Tan Eng Hong first challenged the law in September 2010, after he was charged under 377(a) for having oral sex with another man in a public-toilet stall. Two years later a second challenge was raised by Gary Lim and Kenneth Chee, a gay couple who have been together for 17 years. They argued that the law......

http://www.economist.com/blogs/banyan/2014/10/gay-rights-singapore

[isanbirder]

I know Singapore quite well, and I know quite a number of gays there. They really don't seem to have any problem.

Gay couples live together openly. There are gay bars, and gay cruising areas.

What is not going to be permitted is sexual acts in a public place (and a public toilet is nothing if not public). Do you think a man and a woman would be permitted to have sex in a place where others could see (or at least hear) them?

Cottages are meeting places, just like cruising areas. Of course I know that a lot of sexual activity takes place in them, but can you really object if the government, which provides the toilet for other uses, objects to their use for that purpose?

Of course the whole thing is OTT, but the Singapore government has never been known for its sense of humour.

[Scott]

Here's where the legal question gets a little dicey (from the OP):

M. Ravi, a human-rights lawyer representing the challengers, had argued that Section 377(a) arbitrarily distinguished between gay men and women, leaving the former open to incarceration and the latter untouched, but his argument also held no weight for the court. It cited an earlier ruling that validated that distinction because female homosexual acts "were either less prevalent or perceived to be less repugnant than male homosexual conduct".

So gay men are more repugnant?

This is about two different cases, the couple were not having sex in a public toilet.

[Scott]

Here's what the UN has to say about the ruling:

November 1, 2014

UN rights office calls on Singapore's legislature to respond to court's decision, repeal anti-gay sex law

'Using criminal law to prosecute individuals for engaging in consensual same sex conduct violates a host of human rights guaranteed by international law,' says the UN human rights office

The United Nations human rights office on Friday expressed its disappointment over a ruling by the Singapore Supreme Court to uphold an 150-year-old British colonial law criminalizing consensual same-sex relations between adult men.

On Wednesday, the Court of Appeal rejected two separate Constitutional challenges by Tan Eng Hong who filed the first challenge in 2010, and gay couple Gary Lim and Kenneth Chee in 2012.

- See more at: http://www.gaystarnews.com/topics/Gary%20Lim#sthash.NTrVdlHZ.dpuf