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Rights Mobilization and the Campaign to Decriminalize Homosexuality in Singapore

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  19 February 2014

Lynette J. Chua
Lynette J. Chua*
Affiliation:
Assistant Professor of Law, National University of Singapore
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Abstract

This paper analyzes how activists used a parliamentary petition to overcome legal and political barriers and mobilize openly for gay rights for the first time in Singapore. Unlike societies where rights mobilization has political legitimacy, exercising and claiming rights in the de facto one-party state are non-conformist behaviours and face greater limitations. Gay rights activists in Singapore not only struggle with the state and their opponents over the right to equality; compared to their counterparts in liberal democracies, they also have to overcome stronger restrictions on political access and civil-political liberties that enable or protect rights mobilization. This paper therefore describes and analyzes a politics of rights under authoritarian conditions and the complicated consequences of legal resistance and rights mobilization. Although the petition campaign transformed collective grievances, expanded activists’ support base, and opened up new tactical possibilities, it also provoked intense, third-party opposition and foreclosed other avenues of mobilization.

Keywords

gay rightsrights mobilizationlegal mobilizationsocial movementssocial change
Type
Legal Profession and Social Change in East Asian Countries
Information
Asian Journal of Law and Society , Volume 1 , Issue 1 , May 2014 , pp. 205 - 228
Copyright
Copyright © Cambridge University Press and KoGuan Law School, Shanghai Jiao Tong University 

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Footnotes

*

Lynette J. Chua is an interdisciplinary scholar with research interests in law and social change, and law and social movements. Funding was provided by the Social Science Research Council, National Science Foundation (Award No. SES-0962129), University of California, Berkeley, and National University of Singapore (Start-up Grant WBS No. R-241-000-101-133). I wish to thank Kristin Luker, Catherine Albiston, Calvin Morrill, Kim Voss, Michael McCann, Mark Massoud, Leila Kawar, Indulekshimi Rajeswari, the editors and anonymous reviewers, and the audience at the National University of Singapore-Singapore Management University-Hong Kong University Symposium 2013, where an earlier version of this paper was presented. Most of all, I am grateful to the study respondents. Please direct correspondence to Lynette J. Chua, Faculty of Law, National University of Singapore, 469G Bukit Timah Road, Eu Tong Sen Building, Singapore 259776; e-mail: [email protected].

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