Section 377A was a Singaporean law that criminalised sex between consenting adult males. It was introduced under British colonial rule in 1938 when it was added to the Penal Code by the colonial government. It remained a part of the Singapore body of law after the Penal Code review of 2007 that removed most of the other provisions in Section 377. It was subsequently repealed in its entirety in 2023. Prior to the repeal, the law, while retained de jure in the Penal Code, had been for many years de facto unenforced – there had been no convictions for sex between consenting male adults in decades. While a small number of people were convicted under the section for private consensual acts between adults from 1988 until 2007, enforcement effectively ceased outright following the Penal Code review, despite the retention of section 377A from 2007 to 2022. On 28 February 2022, the Court of Appeal of the Supreme Court of Singapore reaffirmed that 377A could not be used to prosecute men for having gay sex. That same year, an Ipsos survey found that 44% of Singapore residents supported retaining the law, with 20% opposing it and the remaining 36% being ambivalent. On 21 August 2022, Prime Minister Lee Hsien Loong announced during the annual National Day Rally that the government intends to repeal Section 377A, effectively ending criminalisation both de facto and de jure. On 29 November 2022, the Parliament of Singapore passed a bill to repeal Section 377A. The bill was assented by President Halimah Yacob on 27 December 2022 and gazetted on 3 January 2023, thus Section 377A was struck off the books. Background The Indian Penal Code The British Parliament formed the Indian Law Commission in 1833. Lord Thomas Macaulay was appointed to chair the commission. The 1837 draft of the Indian Penal Code was largely his work. It took 23 years for his work to be reviewed by the commission and the Supreme Court judges in Mumbai, Calcutta, and Madras. The code was adopted in 1860 and took effect 1 January 1862. Macaulay's draft did not reflect existing Indian (or other Asian cultures) laws or customs. It was largely a rewrite of the British Royal Commission's 1843 draft code. The adopted draft included a Section 377 (quoted above), but there were many ambiguities in the section, including the question of what had to penetrate what. These in