February 27, 2008
Belated Singapore fact of the day
I was in Singapore last week, promoting The Logic of Life. One feature of the book that some reviewers have picked up on is that the book contains a thoughtful, rigorous and (in my opinion) decorous few pages on the economics of oral sex. It was only as my interview schedule was nearly finished that the publicist said, “by the way, oral sex is illegal in Singapore“.
Hm. Fascinating. And it would have been nice to be told before commencing the tour of Singapore.
It isn’t - s377 of the Penal Code was replaced in October last year. And it was legal as an act leading to intercourse in any case.
So whatever you got up to in Geylang was probably legal. Unless it was with another man, in which case it would fall foul of s377a…
Posted by: Wowbagger | February 28th, 2008 at 4:03 am | Report this comment[…] Tim Harford gave a very engaging talk at Melbourne Business School today to a full house. It is great to see so many students interested in economics that they would voluntarily come to a lunchtime lecture. It bodes well for the world. Also, it looks like Tim didn’t run into the kinds of difficulties that he did with his material in Singapore. […]
Posted by: CoreEcon » Blog Archive » Tim Harford at MBS | February 28th, 2008 at 4:09 am | Report this commenthe didn’t run into any kind of trouble at all. the law was abandoned some time ago. it is left on the books merely to pacify the “moral majority”. not enforced
Posted by: John Smith | February 28th, 2008 at 7:12 am | Report this comment377a, which criminalizes sex acts between homosexual men, is not actively enforced. It’s more of a marker as to the conservative nature of Singaporean society. It’s probably best not to test it too overtly, though.
At the time of the replacement of s377 (it’s not ‘left on the books’ - 377 is now an entirely different offence relating to molesting cadavers), there was a lively debate in Parliament and in the press as to the merits, suggested by the SG govt, of repealing 377a as well.
Ultimately, the majority of Singaporeans didn’t want 377a repealed and it wasn’t.
Posted by: Wowbagger | February 29th, 2008 at 3:27 am | Report this comment