Singapore bans Archie comics featuring gay marriage

Singapore has banned a volume of the long-running Archie comic series because its depiction of same-sex marriage was deemed to breach local ‘social norms’, the city-state’s media watchdog said on Wednesday.

 ‘Archie: The Married Life Book Three’ was banned in March after a complaint from a member of the public triggered a content review, the Media Development Authority (MDA) said in a statement to AFP. 

The volume, made up of six issues of the ‘Life with Archie’ series, features the marriage of Kevin Keller, a friend of the iconic Archie Andrews character, and his African American boyfriend Clay Walker.

The MDA said it assessed the book ‘upon receiving a complaint and found its content to be in breach of guidelines because of its depiction of the same-sex marriage of two characters in the comic’. A special panel that confers with the MDA on objectionable content ‘advised that the theme of the comic was not in line with social norms and is in breach of existing content guidelines,’ the regulator said. ‘We thus informed the local distributor not to import or distribute the comic in retail outlets,’ it said. News of the ban first surfaced when a local comic artist blogged about it earlier today. 

The announcement to ban the volume, published in 2013, comes as a new issue of ‘Life with Archie’ is released in the United States in which Archie dies while trying to save Kevin from an assassination attempt. Kevin, the series’ first openly gay character, is depicted as a US Senator. 

The comic book ban comes in the face of rising tensions between Singapore’s religious conservatives and its growing gay-rights lobby. Earlier on Wednesday, judges of a top literary prize quit over the national library’s plans to destroy three children’s books deemed to be pro-homosexual.