Sex before marriage ‘fudge’ gives hope to Indonesia’s persecuted gays
Are cooler heads beginning to prevail in the country’s latest bout of moral panic?
The ranking member of a parliamentary committee, charged with overhauling the country’s voluminous criminal code, said most politicians were eager to avoid language that would make extramarital sex illegal. The provision is thought to disproportionately impact the country’s gays and lesbians because they are unable to marry.
“We don’t want to have the criminalisation of LGBT,” Ichsan Soelistio, who hails from President Joko Widodo’s Indonesian Democratic Party of Struggle (PDI-P), which has the most seats in parliament.
“This is the same with young people before marriage. We don’t want to criminalise that. The government cannot push into the private matters of the nation.”
The comments come as anti-gay prejudice and moral conservatism reach fever pitch ahead of regional elections this year in the country’s most populous provinces, where issues of piety play well to voters. In Jakarta, legislators are debating changes in the criminal code that would hand down five-year prison sentences for sex between unmarried people.