A Shameful History and a Dark Legacy

This chapter introduces Alfred Kinsey, America’s most famous sexologist, who argued in 1953 that homosexual relations are more severely penalized by public opinion and statute law in the United States than in any other major culture in the world. It looks at the US Supreme Court’s 2003 ruling in the Lawrence v. Texas case, which meant that the United States was no longer the only major Western democracy criminalizing homosexual conduct between consenting adults. The chapter also mentions Alabama, Florida, Idaho, Louisiana, Mississippi, North Carolina, South Carolina, Michigan, Utah, and Virginia, which banned consensual sodomy without respect to the sex of those involved, and Texas, Kansas, Oklahoma, and Missouri, which prohibited acts of sodomy by same-sex couples. It discusses America’s democratic peers in Western Europe and the Americas that ceased to make consensual homosexual relations a crime, such as France in 1791 and Brazil in 1830.

The Communitarian Case for Decriminalising Male Homosexuality for Singapore’s Common Good

Should Singapore’s conservative, communitarian society continue to criminalise male homosexuality in the name of its common good? This is the fundamental question raised by Singapore’s continued retention of Section 377A of the Penal Code, a colonial-era law that criminalises only male homosexual conduct. With reference to Parliament’s reasons for retaining 377A and scholarly arguments against homosexuality, this article reconstructs, and debunks, the best philosophical case in favour of 377A; namely, that it should be conserved to sustain communitarian Singapore’s common good. Instead, the article argues that, because homosexuality is morally permissible, 377A does not satisfy the ‘goodness’ component of the common good and hence does not, and cannot, sustain communitarian Singapore’s common good. Rather, a communitarian approach to 377A, one based on an inclusive conception of communitarianism and an aggregative conception of the common good, would lead to its repeal and vindicate gay men’s right to equality.

Prosecuting Consensual Adult Sex

This chapter examines the legal battles in Texas over the issue of prosecuting consensual adult sex. In a 1963 revision of the Texas Penal Code, the state legislature liberalized the prohibitions on deviant sexual behavior. Sodomy was decriminalized for heterosexual couples, along with bestiality. Hence, a human could legally have sex with an animal but not with another human of the same sex. In the ensuing years there were halfhearted efforts to repeal and all were unsuccessful. The chapter discusses the 1998 case of John Lawrence, Tyron Garner, and Robert Eubanks relating to the issue of homosexuality, and more specifically, private homosexual conduct. It also considers the adoption of constitutional amendments on same-sex marriage in Texas and other states.

America’s Cold War Empire

This chapter analyzes how a fear of homosexuals characterized American Cold War security concerns, leading to the establishment of policies, procedures, and personnel throughout the U.S. government to uncover and remove all suspected gays and lesbians from public service. This state-sponsored homophobic panic was exported to America's Western allies and international organizations such as the United Nations, the International Monetary Fund, and the World Bank. The chapter shows how U.S. officials pressured foreign officials and the heads of international organizations to adopt American-style security procedures and purge their agencies of anyone guilty of homosexual conduct. Fearing the loss of either American financial aid or contact with the U.S. intelligence-gathering apparatus, most sought to comply.

Beyond the rhetoric of international human rights standards in the struggle to decriminalise homosexual conduct in Uganda

In 2014, Uganda’s Constitutional Court struck down the problematic Anti-Homosexuality Act. (AHA). However, since the decision of the court was based on procedural rather than on substantive grounds, the AHA may very well be reintroduced, or, other anti-homosexuality laws in place can still be relied on to criminalise consensual homosexual conduct. The ideal solution is to have all the anti-homosexuality laws struck down in light of Uganda’s international human rights ob• ligations. However, although a number of international human rights instruments lend impetus to the cause of decriminalisation in Uganda; these international standards have thus far not fully persuaded Uganda to have these discriminatory laws struck down. In this article, I argue that whereas arguments based on Uganda’s international and constitutional obligations form a good foundation for reform, these standards cannot of themselves form a complete solution to the problem. Drawing on the various actors that were at the fore in the struggle towards the striking down of the AHA, I argue that translating the rights of lesbian, gay and bisexual and transgender (LGBT) people into a reality will require conscious efforts from a number of actors including the judiciary, international and national human rights defenders and faith-based organisations. I identify some of the mistakes made by the foregoing actors in advocating for the striking down of the AHA, and how these mistakes should be addressed if the cause of decriminalisation is to be effectively advanced. Although Uganda is placed at the heart of the discussion, the conclusions drawn are relevant to other African countries battling with this subject.

Beyond the rhetoric of international human rights standards in the struggle to decriminalise homosexual conduct in Uganda

In 2014, Uganda’s Constitutional Court struck down the problematic Anti-Homosexuality Act (AHA). However, since the decision of the court was based on procedural rather than on substantive grounds, the AHA may very well be reintroduced, or, other anti-homosexuality laws in place can still be relied on to criminalise consensual homosexual conduct. The ideal solution is to have all the anti-homosexuality laws struck down in light of Uganda’s international human rights obligations. However, although a number of international human rights instruments lend impetus to the cause of decriminalisation in Uganda; these international standards have thus far not fully persuaded Uganda to have these discriminatory laws struck down. In this article, I argue that whereas arguments based on Uganda’s international and constitutional obligations form a good foundation for reform, these standards cannot of themselves form a complete solution to the prob- lem. Drawing on the various actors that were at the fore in the struggle towards the striking down of the AHA, I argue that translating the rights of lesbian, gay and bisexual and transgender (LGBT) people into a reality will require conscious efforts from a number of actors including the judiciary, international and national human rights defenders and faith-based organisations. I identify some of the mistakes made by the foregoing actors in advocating for the striking down of the AHA, and how these mistakes should be addressed if the cause of decriminalisation is to be effectively advanced. Although Uganda is placed at the heart of the discussion, the conclusions drawn are relevant to other African countries battling with this subject. Key words: Uganda, international human rights standards, Anti-Homosexuality Act, decriminalisation

Equality and Singapore’s First Constitutional Challenges to the Criminalization of Male Homosexual Conduct

In 2013, in Lim Meng Suang and Kenneth Chee Mun-Leon v Attorney-General1 and Tan Eng Hong v Attorney-General,2 the High Court of Singapore delivered the first judgments in the jurisdiction considering the constitutionality of section 377A of the Penal Code, which criminalizes acts of ‘gross indecency’ between two men, whether they occur in public or private. The Court ruled that the provision was not inconsistent with the guarantees of equality before the law and equal protection of the law stated in Article 12(1) of the Constitution of the Republic of Singapore. The result was upheld in 2014 by the Court of Appeal in Lim Meng Suang and another v Attorney-General3 with slight differences in the reasoning. This article examines the courts’ analysis of equality law, and submits in particular that the courts ought to re-evaluate whether they should apply a presumption of constitutionality, refuse to assess the legitimacy of the object of the impugned provision, and rely on a standard of mere reasonableness or lack of arbitrariness when determining if a rational relation exists between the provision’s object and the differentia underlying a classification used in the provision.

Marriage, the Law, and Samesex Unions

This study argues against the contemporary project of acquiring the legal status of marriage for samesex unions. The preparatory normative approach identifies the religious wrong and the moral unacceptability of samesex sexual activity and liaisons. Legal norms are then superimposed to argue that, while criminalizing homosexual conduct is not now appropriate, the balance of public benefit weighs in favour of preventing samesex marriage, at least by not promoting it as giving it legal status would do. Most pointedly, this treatment is not excluded as a violation of rights, neither a right to freedom of association, nor a right to protection from discrimination, nor a right to equality.