- “I believe my father would have been thrilled to know this,” Li’s dad Lee Hsien Yang said
- Sex between men remains illegal in Singapore but the city state’s first PM had been known to express a different opinion from the government in his later years
revealed on Friday he had married his boyfriend in South Africa, prompting a flurry of mostly positive reactions in his country, where male homosexuality is banned, and around the region.
Li’s father, Lee Hsien Yang, is himself the second and youngest son of the elder Lee, who died in March 2015.
Asked about his son’s nuptials, Lee told the Post : “I believe my father would have been thrilled to know this.”
under Section 377A of the Penal Code but Lee Kuan Yew, who was Prime Minister for 31 years until 1990, had been known to express a different opinion from the government in his later years.
last week – the first of its kind in Asia.
, including Mothership.sg and The Independent, were quick to pick up on the announcement while mainstream media outlets steered clear of reporting it.
“…Homosexuality is illegal in Singapore, and now, Lee Kuan Yew’s grandson is taking the lead,” said a netizen with the username Tired and Humorous.
Another netizen added: “Gay love is still love, homophobia is a disease.”
) community in Singapore were subject to a law that criminalises sex between gay men.
, an annual celebration to support the LGBT community in Singapore that year.
. Huanwu’s elder brother Shengwu, a Harvard University economist, is also
in Singapore.
“You can read the books you want, all the articles. You know that there’s a genetic difference,” Lee said.
“They are born that way and that’s that. So if two men or two women are that way, just leave them alone.”
Earlier, in a book The Wit & Wisdom of Lee Kuan Yew, published in 2007, Lee was quoted as saying: “If in fact it is true, and I have asked doctors this, that you are genetically born a homosexual – because that’s the nature of the genetic random transmission of genes – you can’t help it. So why should we criminalise it?”
Source: SCMP
CHINDIA ALERT: You'll be living in their world, very soon 