Singapore's Ministry of Home Affairs has been mulling the first major legal reform in 22 years. Though they're looking to modernize their legislative system, they're intent on retaining the anti-gay Section 377, which forbids anal and oral sex.

A group of lawyers, Fridae reports, have issued a statement insisting officials would do well to dismantle the colonial era law:

The majority of the Council considered that the retention of s.377A in its present form cannot be justified... Private consensual homosexual conduct between adults does not cause harm recogniseable by the criminal law. Thus, regardless of one’s personal view of the morality or otherwise of such conduct, it should not be made a criminal offence.

The report also highlighted the government's own hestitancy on the matter. Not only were officials split on whether or not to discard the law, but those who favored it claimed it would not be enforced. Of this, the law council wrote, "The retention of unprosecuted offenses on the statute book runs the risk of bringing the law into disrepute.". Despite their disavowal of Section 377, the lawyers maintain they are not endorsing homosexuality. They're simply fighting for "the separation of law and morals". Gotta start somewhere, huh?

Colonialism may largely be a thing of the past, but its legacies still linger. For example, as we've mentioned before, India's law books still recognize the British-originated Section 377, as do the governments in Malaysia, Singapore and other long-independent former colonies.

Written in the 1861 by colonialist Lord Macaulay, the law effectively outlaws same-sex sexin', yet remains a legislative rarity. As Doug Sanders reports over at Fridae, the Brits overturned the law back in 1982, when Jeffrey Dudgeon successfully argued that he had been subject to intimidation and "agitation" by blackmailers looking to expose him. The case remains the same in India, where Section 377 remains a legislative - but not a social - rarity. As politicians and a few gay activists rally against the archaic stipulation, countless queers in these nations still face intimidation, thus forcing them into the shadows. Sanders explains, however, that sunlight's only a shout away.

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Singapore's slated to review its discriminatory penal law, Section 377A, which requests a two-year prison sentence for any gay person who "procures or attempts to procure the commission by any male person of, any act of gross indecency with another male person." While gay activists and liberal politicians have been working to overturn this anachronistic little amendment, the National Council of Churches of Singapore has been putting a little pressure on the government, Fridae reports.

The group's website states: The NCCS commends the Government on taking a clear, unequivocal and bold stand of neither encouraging nor endorsing a homosexual lifestyle and opposing the presentation of the same as part of a mainstream way of life.” They go on to recommend the government extend the prohibition to women of the lesbianic variety:

Given that section 377A PC criminalises homosexuality whether done private or publicly, we are of the view that a similar prohibition ought to be enacted in respect of lesbianism, considering that lesbianism (like homosexuality) is also abhorrent and deviant, whether consensual or not.

Well, at least don't discriminate in their discrimination, right?

You now that the universe has been thrown out of wack (in a good way, of course) when a country where gay sex is punishable by getting tossed in the slammer for two years moving forward with screenings of Brokeback Mountain. Conservative Singapore (remember this is the same place that gave that poor American graffiti artist a spanking a while back- okay they caned the fuck out of the poor kid) doesn't mind seeing Heath and Jake perform some hot shirtless field wrestling. The country’s film critics are even going so far as to call the movie "not very controversial.”

Singapore's media content director said Ang Lee's film was passed as it did not "promote or glamorise the lifestyle".

Someone better inform those right-wingers in the U.S. They seem to think otherwise.

Singapore censor passes Brokeback [BBC]