Hong Kong High Court Strikes Down Laws Against Gay Sex

The Hong Kong High Court Thursday struck down four laws that criminalized sex between men and changed its interpretation of three others.

The court ruled that the laws were all unconstitutional because they applied only to men, criminalizing acts that were legal for women or opposite-sex couples, the South China Morning Post reports.

Justice Thomas Au Hing-cheung invalidated laws against "procuring others to commit homosexual buggery," "gross indecency with or by a man under 16," "gross indecency by a man with a man otherwise than in private," and "procuring gross indecency by a man with a man."

"These provisions are inconsistent with the right to equality ... and discriminatory in nature. They are unconstitutional and should be struck down," the justice wrote, according to Agence France-Presse.

He ruled that three other laws will now apply to women as well as men, as government lawyers requested -- bans on "homosexual buggery with or by a man under 16," "gross indecency by a man with a male mentally incapacitated person," and "permitting a young person to resort to or be on a premises or vessel for intercourse, prostitution, buggery or homosexual acts."

The law involving sex with an underage male carried a maximum sentence of life in prison, while the maximum penalty for a man having sex with a female under 16 was only five years, AFP reports. The court reduced the sentence for sex with a male under 16 to five years while legislators rewrite the law.

The ruling came in a case brought in 2017 by LGBTQ rights activist Yeung Chu-wing. He was not in court to hear the ruling, but his lawyer, Michael Vidler, said the government should have repealed the laws long ago, making the challenge unnecessary. Homosexuality was decriminalized in Hong Kong in 1991, but the discriminatory laws remained on the books.

Tommy Noel Chen, the leader of LGBTQ group Rainbow Action, agreed with Vidler. "This judicial review should not have happened in the first place," he told the Post. "But every time we fought for [changes to these laws], the government either refused or delayed."

The island city was under British control from 1842 to 1997, when it was ceded back to China. It is a "special administrative region" of China, with its own government and a great degree of autonomy, although the Chinese government has the power to overrule Hong Kong's political actions.

Lawyers for Hong Kong's government did not defend the discriminatory sex laws, but in a separate case, the government has been resisting calls for marriage equality or even civil unions for same-sex couples. Government lawyers argued Wednesday that marriage would be "diluted and diminished" and "no longer special" if it became available to same-sex couples, according to AFP. The leader of Hong Kong's Equal Opportunities Commission recently said there was little hope for legislative action to legalize same-sex marriage either.