Singapore Swing: The City's Gay Balancing Act
By CRIS PRYSTAY
The Wall Street Journal
August 10, 2007
SINGAPORE -- In a play about gay life in Singapore staged here last
month, one character asks a homosexual-rights activist why a gay
teacher had departed so quietly after being fired from a government
school. He adds, "I thought the prime minister said they allow gays
in the civil service." The rights activist replies: "That was 2003
-- and that was the ex-PM."
The point of the dialogue was that in real life, Singapore's
leaders have sent mixed signals over the past five years on how the
city-state would deal with its gay community -- on the one hand
allowing such things as plays with homosexual themes, yet on the
other hand keeping a law on the books that makes consensual sex
between men a crime punishable by a prison sentence. And while
various leaders have tried to play down that threat, the gay
community remains uneasy.
During the first half of this decade, homosexuals in Singapore saw
clear signs that attitudes were changing. In 2003, the then prime
minister Goh Chok Tong said that homosexuals "are like you and me"
and shouldn't face discrimination in Singapore's civil service.
After his comments, the gay community flourished; about a dozen gay
clubs, bars and saunas sprang up. The Nation party, an annual gay
rave that began in 2001, soon grew into the region's biggest such
party outside Sydney's Mardi Gras.
But Mr. Goh stepped aside in 2004 to make way for Lee Hsien Loong,
the son of modern Singapore's founding father, Lee Kuan Yew. Mr.
Goh was viewed as being more relaxed and liberal than the Lees. By
2005, a chill had set in. The junior minister for health stood up
in Parliament and said the Nation party could be responsible for a
rise in HIV, the virus that causes AIDS, in Singapore's gay
community. The police that year denied Nation party-organizer
Fridae.com, a company that also runs a gay Web site, a license to
hold the annual rave because it was "contrary to public interest,"
according to a police statement issued at the time.
Then, in another apparent zag, the elder Mr. Lee, who is still a
senior government member with the title of minister mentor, said in
April that homosexuality is genetic, and "we should not go around
like this moral police, barging into people's bedrooms. That's not
our business." Later that month, Mr. Lee elaborated by stating that
the law would eventually have to be changed to keep step with the
rest of the world -- but not yet. "We are not going to allow
Singapore to become the vanguard of Southeast Asia," he said. "We
will follow the world. A few respectable steps behind."
Singapore's stop-and-go approach on gay rights reflects the
balancing act between the leadership's desire to appeal to what it
views as a deeply conservative society, and its bid to diversify
the island-nation's economy away from its core manufacturing base
and turn it into a modern, global metropolis. Singapore wants to
position itself as a major finance, science and arts hub in the
Asian-Pacific region; yet activists contend that gay foreign
professionals -- including bankers and actors -- won't want to come
if they could be branded as criminals, and some homosexual
Singaporeans may opt to pursue their professions elsewhere. The
city-state also wants to be seen as the kind of tolerant, vibrant,
forward-thinking place that is attractive to professionals and
entrepreneurs, regardless of their sexual preference, but,
activists contend, its stance on gay sex sends a signal that it is
a stilted environment.
The Talent Pool
Exactly what effect Singapore's stance toward gay people is having
on its ability to attract and retain talent is hard to quantify.
Certainly, Singapore is viewed as more tolerant toward
homosexuality than its closest neighbors Malaysia and Indonesia,
and it has an active gay community. Fridae.com maintains that of
Singapore's total population of 4.5 million, about 400,000 are gay.
But the city-state is considered to be less gay-friendly than
Thailand, which became host to the Nation party in 2005 and 2006
after it was banned in Singapore. (The organizer has called the
party off this year, saying that as a Singapore company it prefers
to hold the event at home or not at all.)
"I've dealt with openly gay (job) candidates -- people working in
banking, IT, finance, sales and marketing -- and it's never been an
issue" in Singapore, says Mark Ellwood, managing director of
recruitment company Robert Walters Singapore. "I don't remember
anyone ever being prosecuted; it's in writing, but practically
nothing ever happens," Mr. Ellwood adds.
Still, the specter of the law -- even if it isn't used -- is
affecting some people's decision to work in Singapore. For
instance, Fabien Ho, the creative director of Juniper Brands, an
advertising and brand consultancy in the U.K., turned down an offer
last year to move to Singapore from London to start up a branch.
"It would have been a big pay rise and an amazing promotion," says
Mr. Ho, 31 years old, but he felt he would have to go back into the
closet in Singapore. Plus, like many countries, Singapore doesn't
issue dependent visas to gay partners. That was the "real
roadblock," says Mr. Ho, a French citizen whose father is
Singaporean and mother French, and who lived in Singapore between
the ages of 6 and 20. "I resented having to choose between (my)
relationship and this great job in Singapore."
American Eric Feltin, co-founder of London-based Switchfire Ltd., a
technology company that provides mobile-phone dating and chat
services to companies catering to straight consumers, axed a plan
to use Singapore as a base for the company's Asian expansion
because he felt the antigay law was a sign of Singapore's
restrictiveness.
In 2004, one of Mr. Feltin's business partners, who is straight,
suggested the company set up an Asian branch in Singapore to
develop a Chinese-language SMS dating product that could later be
rolled out in China. Mr. Feltin, who is gay, made several trips to
Singapore that year to check it out. "At first blush, it looked
like a very good opportunity: Singapore was a market in its own
right, it was also a stepping stone to China, and there were lots
of good technology partners there with new applications we could
take world-wide. But the more time I spent there, the more uneasy I
got," he says now. "It's hard to define, but the anti-gay law
contributed to my impression that it wouldn't be a good place to do
business."
Michael King, a 58-year-old program manager at Cisco Systems Inc.
in San Francisco, arrived in Singapore in 2002 to take on the role
of operations manager for Asia, but he asked for a transfer after
the first year. "I was completely out as a gay man in California,
but when I got to Singapore I was extremely uncomfortable with
being openly gay and felt forced back into the closet...and felt
like a criminal whenever I socialized with gay friends," Mr. King
says.
Singapore's stance also is causing it to lose out on the lucrative
so-called pink-dollar travel market. According to a 2003 study by
the Singapore Tourism Board, the three-day Nation party, which was
held annually between 2001 and 2004, brought in an estimated US$6
million a year in tourism revenue. The tourism body says it no
longer tracks pink-dollar tourism.
Gay tourists like Dave Tussey, 59, a retired San Francisco police
officer, says he and his partner of 18 years won't come to
Singapore until the antigay law is changed. Mr. Tussey and his
partner travel to Asia frequently for holidays, and have visited
Thailand, Hong Kong and Laos in the past few years, spending
thousands of dollars each trip on hotels, tours and food. But, Mr.
Tussey says, "we won't go (to Singapore) until the politics change
in our favor. I vote with my dollars."
Singapore is in the midst of overhauling its penal code, inherited
from British colonial rulers, and some advocates see it as a prime
opportunity to tackle the part that pertains to homosexuality.
Section 377A of the code states that any male person who commits
"gross indecency" with another male is subject to up to two years
in prison. As part of the revamp, the government now proposes to ax
a colonial-era law that deems oral sex between anyone, gay or
straight, a crime, and legalize anal sex between consenting adult
heterosexuals -- but not between gay men. Britain legalized
consensual homosexual sex in 1967.
Many other Asian countries whose laws are modeled on British
jurisprudence deem homosexual sex a crime, including Malaysia,
India, Pakistan, Bangladesh and Sri Lanka, according to a 2007
report by the Brussels-based International Gay and Lesbian
Association. One Indonesian state, Aceh, that has a Shariah court
system based on Islamic law, also outlaws gay sex among Muslims,
the report says. Singapore's economic rival, Hong Kong,
decriminalized gay sex in 1991, although the former British colony
added a law that made buggery in public places a crime. Last month,
however, Hong Kong's highest court acquitted two men convicted of
having sex in a car and ruled that law unconstitutional.
Over the years, discussions within the Singapore government on gay
rights have centered on the economic impact. "It's about creating a
global city that's attractive to all kinds of talent as well as
retaining the talent we have. It's about tolerance -- it's about
creating a more inclusive society," says Gillian Koh, an analyst at
the Institute of Policy Studies who specializes in the relationship
between the state and civil society in Singapore.
As for the re-emergence of the current debate, "I speculate there
are ministers in the cabinet who think" the law needs to be
abolished soon, says Alex Au, founder of People Like Us, a gay
activist group in Singapore. "I think they are trying to encourage
a debate in order to get Singaporeans to think more progressively
about the issue," adds Mr. Au, who says that in June, he was denied
a permit to hold a photo exhibition of gay couples kissing because
it promoted a homosexual lifestyle.
Meantime, the city-state's goal to become an arts hub remains at
risk, contend members of Singapore's theater community. British
actor Ian McKellen says he was horrified to learn about Singapore's
antigay law when he arrived here last month to perform in the Royal
Shakespeare Company's production of "King Lear."
"Had I known what the law was, I would have said to the Royal
Shakespeare Company, 'What are you doing sending me to a country
that thinks my private behavior is a criminal activity?'" Sir Ian,
who is a gay activist in the U.K., said in an interview. "I think
the RSC should make a disclaimer -- and they will the next time it
happens, because the RSC has a policy of nondiscrimination among
its employees. And in a sense, sending its employee to a country,
where if they had sex, they would be breaking the law, is not a
responsible thing for a company to do," he added.
Responding to Sir Ian's remarks, the Royal Shakespeare Company said
in a statement that it is "committed to the safety and welfare of
our staff wherever they may be in the world."
Playing Russian Roulette
In fact, the antisodomy law hasn't been used to prosecute adult men
engaging in consensual sex in Singapore for many years.
Still, "why have a law you don't want to enforce? Don't
have it, otherwise it's like Russian roulette," says Glen Goei, a
noted Singaporean director of theater and film who spent 18 years
in London and moved back to Singapore five years ago. "You're
pointing a gun to my head but saying I'm not going to use it.
Please take away the gun," says Mr. Goei, who starred
opposite Anthony Hopkins in the Tony award-winning play "M.
Butterfly" in London in 1987; his hit film, "Forever Fever,"
premiered at the Sundance Film Festival in 1999.
"When I came back, I thought, 'wow, it's very refreshing' because
it was a different Singapore than I had left in the '80s, and I
thought 'yes, there's a renaissance going on here and I'm accepted
and appreciated: I can make this my home.' But suddenly I'm
thinking 'wow, I'm not that welcome. Maybe I should think about
leaving again.'"
Indeed, there is a steady drain of young gay Singaporean men who
leave and never come home, Mr. Au says. That takes an economic toll
that's difficult to measure, he adds.
One is Keo Lin. Mr. Lin, 25, applied for a government scholarship
in 2004 to do a teaching degree at Singapore's National Institute
of Education. He got the scholarship, which leads to a guaranteed
job once the degree is complete. Mr. Lin, however, had second
thoughts: Worried he would have to hide his sexual preference
during his entire teaching career or risk getting sacked, he turned
down the offer and enrolled in a bachelor of arts degree program at
the University of Melbourne in Australia.
Mr. Lin kept his sexuality private while he was growing up, and
when he told his mother in 2005, he says it broke her heart. He
still plans to become a teacher, but not in Singapore, where he
says his personal life would basically be against the law.
"There's this view, 'you've got your gay clubs, your gay saunas,
and your plays are allowed to happen' -- but so what? This law is
hanging there," says Ivan Heng, founder of Wild Rice, the theater
company that last month staged "Happy Endings, Asian Boys Vol. 3,"
the play involving the firing of a gay teacher in Singapore. "The
tide keeps coming in and going out for gay rights" in Singapore,
adds Mr. Heng, who is gay. "We have to keep pushing."
http://online.wsj.com/article_email/SB118667829527493165-lMyQjAxMDE3ODA2OTYwNzk4Wj.html
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What Glen Goei said basically sums up the illogical nature of
keeping Section 377A on the books.
