Anti-Gay Legislation in Hong Kong: How and Why it Changed

[Guest fountainhall]

Earlier I posted some comments in the Singapore forum about Elton John’s recent visit – and his comment that the city state should “sort out its gay rights.” It started me thinking about Hong Kong. For a long time, both cities had the same Victorian-era laws on its statute books prohibiting men having sex with men. Even in the early 1980s, Hong Kong seemed set on maintaining the status quo, fearful that any change would alienate many in the fairly conservative Chinese population. And that got me thinking back to how and why Hong Kong finally changed the law – and the event which more or less forced its hand. Since it involves murder, mayhem, closet gays in high places, and a lot more besides, I decided it might make an interesting ‘blog-type’ read.

 

Like Hong Kong 30 years ago, the Singapore government trots out all sorts of platitudes about the pubic not being ready for a change in the laws to take the colonial charge of sodomy off the statute books and to provide equality for gay men. Perhaps, therefore, it needs a kick up the pants with something sensational to force it to act, something similar to what happened in Kong Kong. For in Hong Kong, it took a still-unexplained, tragic and mysterious act to get the government set on the road to reform.

 

In August 1978, the Hong Kong government set up a Special Investigation Unit of the Royal Hong Kong Police Force. Its purpose was to investigate allegations of unnatural offences particularly those involving the procuring and exploitation of young males. In May 1980 questions were asked in the UK Parliament about this Force. The Lord Privy Seal reported that as of that date 13 adults had been brought to court on various charges of buggery, gross indecency, procuration, blackmail and theft. He added the membership of the SIU consisted of between 19 and 27 officers of different ranks.

 

Anyone living in Hong Kong at that time was well aware that the police took note of gay activities. The city boasted only one gay bar named Dateline on a small street now occupied by a fitness centre. To get to Dateline, you had to descend about 20 steps down from the street and then turn right. A bright floodlight made sure the stairs were well illuminated. This was because it was known police occupied a flat in the building opposite and could photograph all those leaving the bar – and with whom.

 

One Chinese author who had spent a few years in the USA, returned to Hong Kong in late 1979. He described gay life in Hong Kong as follows:

 

“When I arrived in Hong Kong from New York, it was like being transported to the state of Mississippi or falling into a time warp and ending up twenty years in the past. There was only one gay bar called Dateline and I only found out about it because this Chinese magazine City Magazine ran a story on gay life and I phoned the editor and asked him for the address. It was hard to get anyone to tell you where these places were. I mean no-one admitted it was a 'gay bar' because sex between men was illegal. I finally found the place and opened the door and I asked the guys there 'Is this a gay bar?' and they denied it. But when I looked around it was so obvious, all these gay people cruising each other. In 1979 there was such a closet mentality.

http://intersections.anu.edu.au/issue4/interview_mclelland.html

 

For the British parliament, the ultimate ‘rulers’ of Hong Kong at that time, to debate the issue of homosexuality in the territory, was highly unusual. Its involvement in April 1980 came about as a result of questions put to a senior parliamentarian following the extremely suspicious death of a former officer of the ICU, Inspector John MacLennan. Whilst the detail of the case remains murky, it is basically as follows.

 

On 4 November 1978, MacLennan was fired from the police and consequently from the SIU. Exactly one month later, he was reinstated. In October 1979, another Inspector in the SIU informed a senior lawyer in the Attorney General’s Department that he had been asked to set up a fellow officer, John MacLennan. For what reason, we have never been told, but it is thought that the police hierarchy wanted the public to believe MacLennan was gay. The Inspector had declined to do so.

 

On 15 January 1980, this same Inspector John MacLennan was found dead in his flat, his police firearm at his side. His front door, his bedroom door, all the windows and other access points were locked from the inside. According to the coroner, MacLennan had died from five gunshot wounds to the chest. The police claimed it was suicide. The jury thought differently. They returned an open verdict. This strictly means that the jury confirmed that the death is suspicious but is unable to reach any of the other verdicts open to them

 

Over the next few months, a scandal of epic proportions developed and rocked Hong Kong to its core. On 23 May, the Attorney General announced that he had reviewed the evidence and saw no reason to reopen the case. He was satisfied that MacLennan had committed suicide with his own police weapon.

 

The jury foreman took issue with this and cast new doubts on the verdict. Prostitutes came forward to claim that MacLennan was a regular client, so much so that he was allowed to pay by cheque. One of his friends on the force said he could not have been homosexual and would never have taken his own life.

 

As this stand-off continued and doubt was cast upon doubt about the reasons for MacLennan’s death, there remained one idiotic suggestion: that anyone could actually believe that a fit, trained police officer would lock himself in his bedroom and then fail so miserably to kill himself with a first bullet to his chest, that he had the energy and the strength of will to pull the trigger not once more, not twice more, not three times more – but four times more, before finally killing himself. And why fire into his chest, when one bullet to the brain would have done the deed much more effectively? It was a suicide/murder that would tax even the master, Sherlock Holmes.

 

One local legislator put forward the suggestion that MacLennan had been killed because he “knew too much” about prominent homosexuals then serving in high offices in Hong Kong – including, as was known to some, the Commissioner of Police and some of the Judiciary.

 

To this day, the world still does not know the truth about how John MacLennan died – or at whose hands. But the shock and controversy surrounding his death eventually became the catalyst for a major change, firstly in the approach to the issue of homosexuality in general, and thereafter to the matter of changing the law, even though there were to be many hurdles still to be overcome.

 

In 1981 a formal Commission of Enquiry was established, chaired by the judge who would become the next Chief Justice. The final paragraph of the Report was especially discouraging to those seeking a change in the law. It stated:

 

110. The conclusions in this Report reveal a number of defects, more in the nature of human frailty and errors than a defective system. We have spent a year looking into a microscope. Instead of cancer, we have found eczema.

After that somewhat unbelievable step backwards, though, there was progress. In 1982, the SIU was disbanded and gays were finally free of police harassment. The Law Reform Commission was asked to look into the pros and cons of changing the law. In its 1983 Report, it surprised many by stating in its third paragraph –

 

Mr Justice Yang’s Sub-committee had been given the task of a fact finding inquiry into the incidence of homosexuality in Hong Kong. They confirmed that, contrary to common belief, there is a considerable community in Hong Kong consisting of members of all races who, by natural inclination, are homosexual. This was confirmed by both medical and sociological experts to exist in all communities, whatever their race.

At a stroke, this got rid of the government's long held position that being gay was a foreign disease by declaring that many Chinese were also gay.

 

The Report ended by proposing that the penalty for sexual conduct between two males in private be removed, provided both were over the age of 21. It then took another 8 years until the government took the last step by striking the anti-gay laws from the statute books. And in 2005, the High Court reduced the age of consent for males to 16, adjudging the misalignment of the age of consent between males and females to be unconstitutional.

 

Would all this have happened without the death of Inspector MacLennan? We will never know. I lived in Hong Kong at that time. I could sense very clearly that his tragic death created a seismic shift in public opinion, one that almost no other action could have achieved. So I am pretty certain that, at the very least, it hastened the reform of the law. Perhaps it needs something similar to shock the Singapore government and its populace to wake up to the need for reform. I only hope it does not mean another person has to die in the process.