Section A is a Singaporean law criminalising sex between consenting adult men. The item of legislation was added to the Penal Code in the s. The item remained part of the Singapore body of law after the Penal Code review of October that removed most of the other provisions in Section The section is entitled Outrages on decency and reads:.
Any male person who, in public or private, commits, or abets the commission of, or procures or attempts to procure the commission by any male person of, any act of gross indecency with another male person, shall be punished with imprisonment for a term which may extend to 2 years. Its mother statute, Section , criminalised any sexual act that went "against the order of nature":. Whoever voluntarily has carnal intercourse against the order of nature with any man, woman or animals, shall be punished with imprisonment for life, or with imprisonment for a term which may extend to 10 years, and shall also be liable to fine.
Penetration is sufficient to constitute the carnal intercourse necessary to the offence described in this section. Macaulay's draft did not reflect existing Indian laws or customs.
Section A Outrages on decency was added to the sub-title " Unnatural offences " in the Straits Settlements in The term " gross indecency " used in the statute was based on the wording of the Labouchere Amendment , also known as Section 11 of the Criminal Law Amendment Act of the UK.
It was not a euphemism for buggery or sodomy , which was already a crime but rather, any other sexual activity between men. The almost identical phrasing between the Labouchere Amendment and Section A is the best evidence that the latter was derived from the former. Unnatural sex or sodomy was not defined in the Indian Penal Code drafted by the British. Legal records show that Indian legislators in the 19th and early 20th centuries interpreted "carnal intercourse against the order of nature" between individuals of all sexes - the law being non-gender specific with its use of the word "whoever" to include anal sex , bestiality and, often after much courtroom deliberation, oral sex as well, namely, any form of sexual intercourse which did not have the potential for procreation.
