Soul Searching Over Sex
By Jason Szep
SINGAPORE (Reuters) - Singapore,
where prostitution is legal and oral sex is a crime, is doing some soul
searching over morality, sexuality and the law.
In a
country ranked last for two straight years in a global list of most
sexually active nations, and where fertility rates are falling, debate
over laws on sex is growing after a 27-year-old man was jailed for two
years for receiving oral sex.
The man, a
police coast guard sergeant, landed in court after a girl reported to
police she had performed fellatio on him after the two met in an
Internet chat room.
Local media
said she was 16 years old, above the age of consent in Singapore. After
days of furious correspondence in the press deriding the oral sex ban as
antiquated and out of step, the government announced that her age at the
time of the incident was 15.
The
controversy is unlikely to die down, lawyers say, because of section 377
in Singapore's Penal Code that police used to prosecute the case.
That
section says "whoever voluntarily has carnal intercourse against
the order of nature with any man, woman or animals can be fined and
jailed up to 10 years, or even for life." That a law that
effectively criminalizes homosexuality and oral sex between men and
women exists and is enforced appears to have mortified much of the
public.
"Does
anyone not realize how archaic the law against oral sex is?" wrote
Christopher Low Kin Siong in one of many letters of protest to the
Straits Times newspaper. "There is no reason why the law should
interfere with anyone's sex life."
"By
enforcing the act, the state has made criminals of the majority of
adults with a sex life."
In face of
the outcry, the government said it was reviewing whether to
decriminalize oral sex.
"The
Ministry of Home Affairs and the Ministry of Law are reviewing the law
relating to oral sex as part of an ongoing review of the Penal Code.
This review will be completed within the next few months," the home
ministry said in a letter published by national media Sunday.
Sustained
public criticism of Singapore's semi-authoritarian government, and its
laws, is extremely rare. But calls for the government to withdraw from
the bedroom are filling Web chat rooms, buzzing around cafes and
stirring protests from lawyers.
"We
need to revise the law," said criminal lawyer Sarbrinder Singh.
"We together with members of parliament are going to debate this
issue in the parliament. Our aim is to legalize oral sex as long as the
female has consented and no force is imposed."
Singh said
a handful of his clients had gone to court because of oral sex and about
20 clients had consulted him on the issue in the past three years.
"In Singapore, oral sex is very common, but going to court is very
uncommon," he said.
Legal
experts say the law is dangerously opaque. In one case detailed in the
Straits Times, a wife had tried to punish her unfaithful husband by
performing oral sex on him and then reporting him to the police.
The
criticisms come as the government struggles to relax censorship laws
that now ban Playboy magazine, clip racy scenes from movies and scissor
drug references from pop cultural magazines -- rules that have helped
earn Singapore the well-known sobriquet of Asia's "nanny
state."
Although a
ban on "Sex and the City (news
- Y!
TV)," the hit U.S. TV sitcom about a quartet of single women in
New York, was lifted in September along with a 21-year ban on
Cosmopolitan magazine, authorities have yet to air the show or allow
"Cosmo" to go on sale.
Officials
say they need more time to ensure the conservative majority in the
island's polyglot community of ethnic Chinese, Malays and Indians are
not offended. Residents say they expect this to mean parts of "Sex
and the City" will still be censored.
The public
generally supports Singapore's tough laws -- including the death penalty
for drug smugglers, bans on pornography and curbs on political dissent
-- as part of a social contract that in return has delivered years of
economic prosperity.
But laws on
sex are different, residents say, exposing a raw nerve in a country that
only this year revealed that gays now worked in the public service -- a
low-key policy shift aimed in part at fostering a creative class and
attracting foreign talent.
Meanwhile,
prostitution remains openly legal.
On
Singapore's most fashionable shopping street, for example, a plaza with
dry cleaning services, jewelers and golf stores is also filled with
escort services and several floors of discos known as gathering points
for women selling sex.
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