Singapore’s former Prime Minister Lee Kuan Yew, and father of current PM Lee Hsien Loong, said that gay sex should be decriminalised.

Gay sex in Singapore is currently classified as "an act of gross indecency" and is punishable by up to two years in prison.

Lee Kuan Yew, who served as PM from 1959 to 1990, spoke at a youth rally on Saturday and suggested that the government should refrain from making moral judgements.

He said that the city state should change its approach on homosexuality, especially considering scientific evidence suggesting that it is genetic.

"This business of homosexuality...it raises tempers all over the world. And even in America! If in fact it is true, and I have asked doctors this, that you are genetically born a homosexual — because that's the nature of the genetic random transmission of genes — you can't help it,” he said according to The Straits Times.

"So why should we criminalise it?” Kuan Yew asked.

" But there is such a strong inhibition, in all societies - Christianity, Islam, even the Hindu Chinese societies. And we are now confronted with a persisting aberration. But is it an aberration? It's a genetic variation."

Only last year Singapore announced it would decriminalise oral and anal sex for adult heterosexuals, but gay sex remains illegal.

Lee said that he would introduce amendments to the gay sex laws, which are pending in Parliament.

"So what do we do?” Kuan Yew added.

" I think we pragmatically adjust, carry our people ... don't upset them and suddenly upset their sense of propriety and right and wrong. But at the same time let's not go around like this moral police ... barging into people's rooms. That's not our business. You have to take a practical, pragmatic approach to what I see is an inevitable force of time and circumstance."