When reading a book about the US Supreme Court, I read: “there are 2 types of cases that go to the Supreme Court. There are abortion cases and there is everything else.”
In this sense, Singapore is more liberal than the US. Everybody has a right to get an abortion. It is not something that is bitterly fought over. Unlike homosexuality.
When we look back on the late noughties, we might find that homosexuality is one of the big issues of Singapore. It is almost the first issue to be dealt with in a democratic manner. The casino issue was not a democratic decision. The government knew they were going to build it, no matter what, and it was simply a matter of them promising that they would take appropriate measures to prevent problem gambling from being an issue for Singapore citizens. The rest of the world, on the other hand, is free to fuck up their lives however they want.
Anyway, this issue was one that got seriously debated about in parliament. An NMP (and he’s only a couple of years older than me) first raised the motion to get an archaic anti-sodomy law struck down. The motion didn’t get passed but there was a lot of debate over the issue and nasty words exchanged. There always was a lot of gay activism in Singapore but it was mostly underground. Now everything’s come to the surface.
Gay activism has been around since at least the early 90s and I saw quite a bit of it in my school. I think at that time it was basically assumed that it was a progressive idea that we accept all Singaporeans as they are, gay or straight, that this idea would take root and eventually people would accept things as they are.
That was not the whole story. I don’t really think that Chinese culture is homophobic. There has never been an explicit philosophy that accepts something like that but never an explicit condemnation of it either. Unlike western culture we don’t glorify the “real man” because so many senior government posts have gone to eunuchs. There is also the Dream of the Red Chambers, which depicts some homosexual activity. No problem with that either. Should we be surprised that Lee Ang is the director of “Brokeback Mountain”? But that’s not even his best homosexual movie. That honour should go to “The Wedding Banquet”.
It is worthwhile to go back to “The Wedding Banquet” because I see that as the typically Chinese attitude towards homosexuality. The son goes to the US and has a gay lover. The father thinks that the son’s going to marry a woman. Later on he has a stroke, and eventually we know that that’s when he started realizing that his son is gay. But at the end of the day, his love for his son triumphs and he accepts everything.
You see, it’s incidents like this where I feel that Chinese culture is very practical and secular. I feel that Chinese people are both highly conservative and highly practical, but in the end, the practical side will win.
I don’t think the government has any definite stand on this. It has always been the style to seek consensus on issues, and if there are issues which are controversial enough that you can’t really have a consensus, it will not act. Maybe people will think of LKY as a dictator, but he is first and foremost a pragmatist. His attitude, revealed in a IHT interview is “eventually people will come round to accepting this”. Given that the speaker is an 80 something year old man, you can translate this as follows: “I’ll be dead and gone by the time this issue is resolved so don’t bother me with this.”
He thinks that maybe 20-30% of Singaporeans have accepted this. He also thinks that as Singapore gets more cosmopolitan, people with their cosmopolitan attitudes will come round to the idea. Apparently he has less patience with the fundamentalist Christian groups, who are not pragmatic.
His own views? He’s a peranakan. Men are not really men, women are not really women. They don’t really care about homosexuals.
For me they have always been around, like the sun has always risen. Why have a view on things that always exist? Even if you think they are weeds, if you pluck them away they will grow back. It is stupid and wasteful to try to eradicate them.
What do the Muslims think about this? Well the way things have gone since 9/11, they have been very quiet about their religion. If they are moderates, and I believe most Singaporean Malays are moderates, you will not have anything to say about the fundamentalist Christians. There is nothing great about what Islam has to say about homosexuals. If you are an extremist, then you’d be better off giving night classes to aspiring terrorists, and not open your mouth and alert the ISD to your presence.
There has been a lot said about the AWARE saga. The new guard has a point when they say that AWARE needs to be rejuvenated. But not like that!
In a few years’ time, though, what is really significant about this incident is that democracy is taking place in Singapore. You actually get to see people taking sides over an issue, arguing, thinking through their arguments. You may or may not agree with them, but you will engage. When you have studied enough history, you start to realize that there is no such thing as the One Great Truth, because peoples’ attitudes towards things have varied so much over large periods of time that such a notion (of a One Great Truth) frankly looks a little ridiculous. What is right is in large part influenced by the prevailing norm.
People have argued that repressive laws in Singapore are mainly responsible for there not being much of a democratic movement here. But that’s only one aspect. The fact is that you cannot have a democracy without a critical mass of people, a sophisticated and educated bunch thinking about issues, and then voicing their opinions on it. This iterated process of forming and opinion, listening to other people and then revising your opinion is actually more crucial to democracy right now.
So even if Singapore were to repeal all the detention without trial clauses and relax all constraints on the media, there wouldn’t be democracy. As the invaders of Iraq learnt, democracy doesn’t automatically come to a population just because you mandate it. (such a contradiction – how do you mandate a democracy?) It has to be bottom up. And bottom up movements are slow and messy.
So I think in the long term, this issue, ironically provoked by a small group of the Christian Right in Singapore, is one of the things that will eventually lead to democracy being practiced in Singapore, more so than a Chee Soon Juan type clown facing off with the policemen in Hong Lim. Democracy is not a political movement. It is a process.
I watched the situation from my laptop. The Online Citizen were reporting live from Suntec. It was great. For the last 2 weeks, my old secondary school form teacher, who is a bit of an activist, had been putting up plenty of articles urging the ladies to go down and help oust the Thio Su Mien faction. I think there has been a lot of canvassing going on over the last 2 weeks.
Up till the end, I wasn't sure which side was going to win. Ostensibly the government doesn't take sides on this, but there are signs. First, it was the Straits Times who broke the news. Straits Times does not break news unless somebody who is somebody winks at the editor.
Then you had statements by Vivian Balakrishnan who says that he is very displeased at how AWARE is fighting among themselves. Does he mean that he's displeased at both sides or displeased at the side who started the fight? Hmmmm. Then he said that AWARE should be a "rainbow coalition". Does that mean that he supports the side who is more inclusive? (ie the old guard). Hmmmm... And one of my friends commented on the rainbow innuendo - the rainbow is the symbol of gay pride. (The way that se in Chinese means both "colour" and "lust").
But most importantly, I think that the government is probably very displeased at how a christian fundamentalist group managed to hijack AWARE. The government is very clear about this: Singapore government is secular. Keep religion out of everything. If they could make Singapore a-religious they would. Now a christian fundamentalist group wants to test the system
Do you not know that if the Singapore government is sick and tired of you it means that you are fucked? They put up with TT Durai for years because they were afraid of the consequences - what would happen if TT Durai was exposed. Until one day they had enough, end of story, TT Durai is fucked. Now the feminist mentor has stepped over the line, well, she's fucked too.
But the turnout was incredible. They managed to get 2000 people to turn up at the AWARE EGM. Of course poor Josie Lau has to be the one footing the bill. From the reports, the atmosphere was electric. Somebody bitched that Josie Lau had exceeded her 3 minutes. At one point, the Thio Su Mien faction told people to "shut up and sit down". There are a few phrases that just become symptomatic of the occasion and it seems that "shut up and sit down" is it.
Because "shut up and sit down" is the way the Thio Su Mien exco have been running the show. They cut the non-TSM faction out of the loop, they make their decisions in closed rooms, they dress their decisions in the fancy corporate- speak, they are not transparent about their intentions.
In the end, people are offended that AWARE, an organisation that speaks for women's rights, are taken over by a faction that speaks out against the rights of gay people. They are offended that AWARE, for many years a bastion of liberal thought in a (probably conservative) PAP system, are taken over by conservatives. They are offended that the TSM faction have brought their Christian ideologies into a secular organisation. They are offended that the TSM faction are so sneaky and underhanded. And arrogant.
But before today, the question on my mind, and other peoples' minds, are - do Singaporeans care enough to turn up at the EGM? Well we know the answer. We knew already that the good church going folk of Church of Our Saviour are going to turn up. They were part of the well organised system which had taken over AWARE, and had more than 700 votes. It was a question of how many pro-old faction people were going to turn up. In the end, more than 1400 did.
Who were they? I don't know, but thank goodness they turned up.
There was still some uncertainty towards the very end about whether the TSM faction were going to concede defeat. They were thinking about how to challenge the results of the vote. Legally, they didn't have to go. A vote of no-confidence may not be binding. But at the end of the day, they must have realised that if they had stayed on, they were as good as lame ducks. So they left.
Alfian said this about Singapore: if you care too much about Singapore, it will first break your spirit and then it will break your heart. But I have always felt that he didn't have enough patience.
That night I had a dream. I dreamt that AWARE had changed their name to AROUSE, and voted me in as the first "fully erected male member". It was a great dream.
Anyway, in 1973 the US Supreme Court voted to legalise abortion, or rather the ruling was that states may not pass laws to legalise abortion. Unlike in Singapore, abortion is something that strongly influences whether a couple stays together or not. As in the homosexuality issue, one of the main concerns is about family values.
Like the abortion issue, this is also something highly controversial that will never go away. The gay issue is being fought right now in other parts of the world, not just Singapore. Considering that Roe vs Wade was more than 30 years ago, it is somewhat surprising that it's still being fought over in the US, but it is. This gay issue has the potential to be something polarising for Singapore in the years to come.
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