Days after India legalized consensual gay sex in a historic judicial ruling, a Singaporean DJ has filed a lawsuit to bring that ruling to his home country.
Johnson Ong Ming, who performs as DJ Big Kid, filed the suit against the Singaporean high court on Monday to challenge Section 377A, the clause in the country’s Penal Code that prohibits any “gross indecency” between two men. It is akin to the same British colonial-era ordinance that was just eliminated in India last week, and in Taiwan last year.
The 43-year-old DJ’s lawyers, Suang Wijaya and Eugene Thuraisingam, issued a joint statement to Reuters on Wednesday, saying the sanction is “in violation of human dignity.”
“We intend to argue that Section 377A is absurd and arbitrary,” wrote Ming’s lawyers, who are working on the case pro bono.
Though the rule is not strictly enforced, the country still holds largely conservative views toward LGBT people. A petition started on Sunday to preserve Section 377A in Singapore has garnered nearly 100,000 signatures.
Other former British colonies, including Malaysia and Ghana, prohibit gay sexual relations under a similar clause derived from British colonial rule.
