Lawmakers may outlaw gay and extramarital sex

Activists decry new legislation in once-tolerant country.

JAKARTA, INDONESIA — Prodded by religious conservatives, Indonesia is moving toward outlawing gay sex — and even sex outside marriage — in a jarring change for a country long seen as a bastion of tolerance in the Islamic world.

The proposed sexual crackdown in the Southeast Asian archipelago of more than 260 million people — the world’s largest Muslim-majority nation and third-largest democracy — is drawing criticism at home and abroad from human rights organizations and LGBT activists. They warn that penal code revisions now under consideration in Parliament would discriminate against large numbers of people, promote extremist views and reverse democratic gains.

Ichsan Soelistio, a member of a special commission in the House of Representatives working to update Indonesia’s criminal code, said the body has reached consensus to include laws outlawing extramarital sex, as well as gay sex, and is likely to do so soon, but with some limitations.

“More conservative elements want full criminalization, which we reject,” Soelistio, a member of Indonesia’s largest political party, said in an interview this week. “But we have agreed to accept a law which allows prosecution of sex outside marriage and homosexual sex, but only if one of the sexual partners or their family members report the crime to police.”

President Joko Widodo, a fellow member of Soelistio’s Indonesian Democratic Party of Struggle (PDI-P), is considered more secular and liberal than most major Indonesian politicians, and he will almost certainly face off against a more conservative Muslim figure in his bid for re-election in April next year. The legislators also face re-election, and opposition parties recently have used religion as a wedge issue to great effect.

In the interview in his parliamentary office, Soelistio, 63, repeatedly emphasized that his party would prefer to stay out of regulating citizens’ private lives. But he asserted that given political realities, the proposed new rules were the best way to protect LGBT and other at-risk communities.

“Without this kind of firewall, there is the risk that the public can try to take the law into their own hands,” he said. Not everyone finds this argument convincing.

“That is not protection,” said Lini, an Indonesian LGBT activist. “LGBT Indonesians are often rejected by their families or the victims of violence within the family. Allowing their parents to throw them in jail legally is the opposite of helping.” Lini, who works with the LGBT organization known as Arus Pelangi (Rainbow Flow), did not want to be identified by her full name out of fear for her safety.

In cases of gay sex, the proposed changes call for prison sentences for acts committed in public, with a minor, or when used for commercial or pornographic purposes. In such cases, a complaint by one partner or family member is not required.