Sociologist JACK JIN GARY LEE (New School for Social Research) traces the double standards embedded in the colonial criminalisation of gay sex.

Reflecting on the recent repeal of Section 377A of the Penal Code, Russell Heng, playwright, activist, and pioneering scholar of postcolonial Singapore’s queer history, recounted a past troubling encounter with the police at Esplanade Park, one of the sites where gay men could meet each other in the 1980s. As he recalled, “We were roaming about that night. And then suddenly, there was a loud voice – a plainclothes policeman – who started shouting at us.” Momentarily detained in this quiet, tree-lined public space right by the civic center of the island, Heng and other men were shamed and bullied by this officer for “just walking in the park.” Caught in a time when Section 377A criminalized even abetting or “attempts to procure” acts of “gross indecency” between males, Heng and other’s experience echoed, in part, the targeting and surveillance of men who sought same-sex relations five decades prior—before the passage of this colonial law.

Raids, arrests, and the violent interrogation of non-European suspects set the stage for the enactment of Section 377A in colonial Singapore. In the incipient stages of what officials later called the “Malayan ‘sexual perversion’ cases,” the authorities panicked after their discovery of same-sex liaisons between colonial elites and local men in 1938. Their response was blundering and brutish, as those involved were threatened, beaten, and even banished. In their alarm, we find a hidden tale of colonial folly behind the hasty criminalization of “gross indecency” just months after officials got wind of the same-sex activities involving a rising magistrate R and others. The tragic story of the investigation into their cases preceded the “strange career of gross indecency” in colonial and postcolonial Singapore. We have to understand it to grasp the steps leading to colonial government’s passage of this infamous provision. It also sheds light on what the fixation with desire and sexuality — whether in this unsettled colonial context or the global panic over matters of gender and sex — says about the recurring anxieties of men in power.

A Furtive Colonial Affair

When R’s name first came up in the police’s investigation of reports of male prostitution in the colony, it was met with a mixture of alarm and disbelief. Learning of a police investigation that implicated 60 officials and other elites in Singapore and the neighboring Malay states, the colony’s attorney general sought immediate counsel from his superiors in London on 10 January, 1938. What could he and the governor do about those officials who were under investigation? Should they be asked to remove themselves from the colony or face charges for sodomy, which would be difficult to prove? Instead of public trials, could he subject suspected officials to disciplinary proceedings that would avoid public scrutiny? He preferred the latter solution, for the risk of scandal seemed too great. The whole matter tormented him and the governor: if made public, the investigation and the “wave of unnatural crime spreading in the country” would damage British prestige and rule — proof that they failed their self-proclaimed duties of protection and trusteeship.

The fallout did not transpire as feared. British officials sought to keep their inquiry under wraps by either disciplining ranking officials behind closed doors or encouraging them to depart (under threat). However, the same-sex liaisons between officials and locals were the subject of gossip and known to those in their circles. Victor Purcell, an official of this time, remembered the affair as a “social upheaval” that transpired “when the diary of a professional Chinese catamite fell into the hands of the police” The curious biblical term “catamite” denoted those who were subordinated in paid same-sex transactions with elite men. While Purcell adds that the turmoil tarnished a few “prominent figures” and led to two suicides, those labelled as “catamites” bore the brunt of the colonial government’s crackdown. Targeted and arrested by the police, they were coerced into divulging their associates and testifying against suspected partners. Many of them were likely then banished as “undesirable characters” by the colony’s Executive Council (the governor’s cabinet)—their presence marked in our present through acts of queer remembrance.

Like the disappeared “catamite,” the traces of the “Malayan ‘sexual perversion’ cases” were also erased as the British raced to contain this looming scandal. The file containing the attorney general’s alarmed response to the “wave of unnatural crime” and a copy of R’s closed-door disciplinary proceeding remained unexamined until its recent declassification and analysis. In the public record, little was said about these cases in the colonial legislature, where the introduction of a new provision on “gross indecency” simply noted that it made “penal offences of another kind which are not at present covered by our law.” This lack of elaboration has shaped subsequent interpretations of this measure. In the parliamentary debates over repeal in Singapore, the minister of law explained that “section 377A was…introduced to bring our law in line with the UK criminal law.” There was, of course, more to this, as we learn when we turn to the unspoken context of the law’s enactment. These threads show how the colonial government’s quiet prosecution of R and others like him was coupled to a public strategy of deterrence that involved the fateful criminalization of same-sex relations.

“Diary” of a “Catamite”

The affair began with “the diary of a professional Chinese catamite,” so claimed Purcell. This was only true in part. This “diary” was, in fact, a “pocket book” filled with car numbers that an anti-vice detective, Inspector Jeans, obtained in his raids of the areas around the Esplanade. R’s car number gave him away. The “pocket book” and its contents spoke of a time when men solicited each other for sex and intimacy in coded interactions. The car numbers facilitated recognition. With police surveillance, this could be a high wire act. These meetings between members of the colony’s elite and working-class local men were unequal encounters, for they involved powerful men waiting in cars for the latter to approach. If the police came, one could readily depart the scene while the other could not. In the words of another of the men who was apprehended and made to testify against R, we catch a glimpse of these encounters.

In R’s combative hearing, he challenged every detail of the eye-witness accounts against him. In this instance, there was, apparently, no way for him to meet T.A.L. He was at a show, “The Pirates of Penzance,” at the nearby Victoria Memorial Theatre that evening. There emerged other issues: T.A.L. claimed to have met the magistrate in the courtroom two years ago but this occurred before another judge; he was also “hammered” [hit] by the police. The colonial police had marred their investigation. More than one witness was roughed up by detectives. Despite such damning revelations, such violations were overlooked by a disciplinary committee more interested in establishing R’s guilt and dismissal. Their overriding concern was the problem that, apart from the one “pocket book,” the other evidence against R were the testimonies of “catamites.” This was ironic. For all the alarm the investigation generated, the abuses and biases of colonial officials made it impossible for them to successfully charge R and others like him. R could not be found “guilty” even though the disciplinary committee felt that “all is far from well and that there is reason for thinking that Mr. [R] is notorious among the catamites of the town…”

Caught in their own vise, the colony’s leading officials embarked on a course of legislative action to curb same-sex relations between European men and “catamites.” After R’s hearing, the Executive Council recommended his removal on 9 March, 1938. They then decided to introduce a bill in the Legislative Council to amend the Penal Code at their following meeting. On 25 April, the Legislative Council went ahead with the first reading of a new law that criminalized “gross indecency.” This was read again and subsequently enacted at the next session of the Legislative Council on 13 June, a month after the Executive Council’s discussion of a still-classified police memorandum on “sexual perversion.” Officials deemed the law necessary because “no person can be prosecuted for such practices until the amending Bill is passed.” Within a span of about five months since the attorney general’s hurried request for advice on the spate of cases, the crime of “gross indecency” became a fait accompli in the colony. It allowed the colonial government to punish liaisons between officials of a lower rank, e.g. soldiers, and local “catamites.” In postcolonial Singapore, Section 377A facilitated restrictions on gay life and spaces—not just public cruising — because of its reach and symbolism.

Was R engaged in a same-sex liaison or watching Pirates of Penzance at Victoria Theatre?

Who’s Afraid of Desire?

Seen at its origins, Section 377A established a double standard. Higher-ranking officials like R could avoid prosecution in court, but the same cannot be said of other men. Colonial rule demanded the respectability of its officials. These men in power could not be associated with “catamites.” As the governor saw it, they had to be “jointly responsible for the good name of their race.” R grasped this connection between power and respectability as well, even trotting out witnesses who also spoke of his interactions with a supposed British fiancée. Despite his efforts, he lost this game of appearances and departed the colony soon after the recommendation of his removal. There were no public reports of the abrupt disappearance of this magistrate and others who were tarnished by the wrong kind of desire (even if it could not be proved). They just left, preserving the myth of British respectability, “responsibility,” and power. Section 377A, which enabled the unequal surveillance and policing of same-sex desire, remained as the visible legacy of this tale of colonial folly until the law’s repeal in 2022. Turning to our present, we might ask what control over matters of desire do for men in power, or why “disorders” of the heart continue to provoke their anxieties over social order and hierarchy. Unruly feelings might well register a moment when our orientations turn and a different imaginary comes into view.

– This essay condenses and revises the research and analysis of the author’s journal article: Lee, Jack Jin Gary. 2025. “Anxieties of Whiteness: Evidence, Race, and Emotions in the (Non-)Prosecution of the “Malayan ‘Sexual Perversion’ Cases,” pp. 262-283 in Legal Histories of Empire: Navigating Legalities, edited by Lyndsay Campbell and Shaunnagh Dorsett. New York: Routledge.