Lawmaker pushes bill against gay soldiers

By Kim Jae-won

An opposition lawmaker pledged Wednesday to push for a bill to punish gay soldiers for homosexual activities.

Rep. Min Hong-chul of the Democratic United Party (DUP) said that he plans to submit a revised military criminal bill which can slap soldiers with up to two years jail term for engaging in homosexual activities.

Currently, the military criminal law lacks clauses on homosexual activities.

“We want to clarify punishment on homosexual activities among soldiers, reflecting a ruling of the Constitutional Court which said it is constitutional to punish gay soldiers,” said Kim Byeong-wook, an aide of the Rep. Min.

The Constitutional Court upheld a ban on homosexuality in the military in March 2011, worrying that sexual activities between same-sex soldiers could damage the military power of the forces.

Rep. Min also said he seeks to expand punishment on homosexual activities between female soldiers, considering the increasing number of servicewomen in the military. According to the legislator, the number of female soldiers is expected to surpass 10,000 in 2015, accounting for 5 percent of the whole military force.

However, the lawmaker’s move to enforce punishment on gay servicemen faced a backlash from human rights activists who say it is a clear back-peddling of social justice.

“The revised bill means that the state can punish sexual activities between adults, which is a violation of basic human rights,” said the Military Human Rights Korea in a statement.

The activist group said that there is no correlation between homosexuality and weakness of military power, saying it is nonsense to limit basic human rights based on such unreasonable arguments.

The debate comes at a time when lawmakers of the DUP plan to withdraw a bill they sponsored to ban discrimination against social minorities, including homosexuals. Observers say they yielded to conservative Christian groups, who have a huge voting power. Conservative Christian groups strongly opposed the bill, describing it as satanic.

Homosexual activists criticized the opposition party for making sexual minorities scapegoats to earn more support from conservatives.

“The DUP is in the center of creating discrimination and hatred against sexual minorities. There will be no human rights, freedom and democracy if we do not fight discrimination and hatred against sexual minorities,” said the Solidarity for LGBT Human Rights of Korea in a statement. LGBT refers to the lesbian, gay, bisexual and transgender community.