High Court reserves judgment on second 377A case
A judge in Singapore’s High Court on Wednesday reserved judgment on a second case brought before the court questioning the constitutionality of a controversial law criminalising gay sex.
The application, filed by 49-year-old Tan Eng Hong through his lawyer M Ravi, challenged the validity of Section 377A of the Penal Code, which provides that consensual intimacy between men is against the law.
Tan was initially charged under the section in question when he was arrested in 2010 for engaging in fellatio with another man in a toilet cubicle in a mall. After Ravi questioned its constitutionality, prosecutors amended their charges to that of committing an obscene act in public, for which Tan and his partner were fined $3,000 each.
On Wednesday, Ravi said in a closed-chamber hearing that Section 377A is “inherently absurd, arbitrary, vague and discriminatory and as such offends the fundamental, overarching requirements of the rule of law and natural justice”.
One of the plaintiff’s main arguments is that the section violates Article 12 of the Constitution, which provides for equality of all citizens before the law, adding further that all citizens are entitled to equal protection by the law.
Responding to Tan’s case was senior counsel Aedit Abdullah, acting for the Attorney-General’s Chambers, who, according to The Straits Times, said that the section is founded on an intelligible difference based on gender.
Presiding over the case is Justice Quentin Loh, who also reserved judgment in a similar court challenge brought forward by couple Gary Lim and Kenneth Chee late last year. Lim’s and Chee’s constitutional challenge was heard last month, with similar arguments by their lawyers being advanced.
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