Singapore might change its adoption laws to block same-sex couples.
Back in 2013, a gay man from Singapore paid $200,000 to have a US woman become his surrogate and help him have a baby boy. Unfortunately, Singapore would not let the man legally adopt the boy for several years. The man was attempting to use a loophole to adopt a surrogate child from elsewhere, as surrogacy is illegal in the country, and give the child Singaporean citizenship that way.
But at the end of last year, a three-judge panel relented and saw that allowing the adoption bid would “increase the child’s prospects of acquiring Singapore citizenship and securing long-term residence in Singapore." Otherwise, the child would have been stranded and orphaned.
In the aftermath of that court battle, Singaporean politicians now want to make adoption laws stricter.
According to the South China Morning Post, the Minster of Social and Family Development was not pleased by the gay man’s workaround of the law.
“Following the court judgment, MSF (Ministry for Social and Family Development) is reviewing our adoption laws and practices to see how they should be strengthened to better reflect public policy,” said Minister Desmond Lee.
Ultimately, Lee, and like-minded politicians, want to thwart the growth of families run by same-sex couples. As such, they want to restrict adoption law to block “the formation of family units with children of homosexual parents through institutions and processes such as adoption.”
“While we recognize that there are increasingly diverse forms of families … the prevailing norm of society is still that of a man and a woman,” said Lee.
Singaporean law still contains a colonial-era ban on gay sex, though prosecutions are rare. A slight majority still favors the law, according to an online survey conducted last year.
h/t: South China Gay News
