Gay Pastor in New York Urges Change in Malaysia

[William769]

The Rev. Boon Lin Ngeo, a Malaysian Protestant pastor whose message of tolerance for homosexuals has drawn fire in his country, sat with his male partner on a lime-green sofa inside the Office of the City Clerk in New York on a late summer day, where they waited their turn to be married.

The banality of the scene — the plastic-sealed bouquets, the bureaucratic march of couples through the office — masked the roiling effect that Mr. Ngeo’s nuptials have had in Malaysia, where Muslims are a majority and sodomy, even among consenting adults, remains a crime punishable by as many as 20 years in prison.

“I’m nobody here,” he said in New York, where same-sex marriage became legal in June, “but this marriage could have a global impact.”

While prosecutions in Malaysia under the sodomy law are rare, they are not unheard of. The leader of the country’s political opposition, Anwar Ibrahim, is facing sodomy charges for the second time in what he has called a politically motivated trial.

http://www.nytimes.com/2011/10/19/world/asia/boon-lin-ngeo-gay-pastor-in-new-york-urges-change-in-malaysia.html?_r=1