Two gay-related stories from DPA

source: Deutsche Presse-Agentur

4 October 2007
Deutsche Presse-Agentur

Singapore sends mixed signals on homosexuality

Singapore - Leaders of economically vibrant Singapore are sending mixed signals on homosexuality in the competition with other Asian countries for more foreign talent. While allowing a small number of gay bars, restaurants and saunas to thrive, homosexual acts are still outlawed and carry a prison term of up to two years. Even such frivolities as gay picnics with participants clad in pink are prohibited.

"The government's stand is full of absurdities," said Alex Au, the 54-year-old founder of the gay rights group People Like Us. "Changes are coming slowly, but the pace is frustrating."

"Singapore takes one step forward, one step backwards and one step sideways," Au added.

The message sent to homosexuals abroad by recent events would not encourage gays to relocate to the Singapore state, said activist Charles Tan, referring to those who are used to being openly gay.

"Life for local gays is not really life when disclosure often results in ostracism by families, isolation at school and little chance of a job," said 30-year-old Tan.

An onslaught of contradictions emerged during the recent third annual gay pride festival.

Licenses were denied for an exhibition scheduled to show 80 photographs of same-sex people kissing and the reading of a story about a young man's fantasies of sex with older men, including government and military officials. Discussions led by foreigners were also ruled out, along with the picnic and a gay run.

In rejecting the display of photographs, the Media Development Authority said that homosexual-themed content was permissible in an "appropriate context," but should not be of a "promotional or exploitative nature."

Brief same-sex kissing has been allowed in plays and movies restricted to those 21 or over, the regulator said. The exhibition was deemed as promoting "a homosexual lifestyle" and not allowed.

In banning the picnic and run, police said they were "contrary to public interest" in the highly conservative city-state of 5.6 million people who are predominantly Chinese. Muslim Malays make up 14 per cent and Indians 7 per cent, with the remainder a variety of ethnic groups.

Other Asian countries which were former British colonies with laws regarding homosexual sex as a crime include India, Sri Lanka, Malaysia, Bangladesh and Pakistan.

Hong Kong, a strong economic rival, decriminalized gay sex in 1991. The latest constitution in Thailand, another competitor, grants equal rights for homosexuals.

The government announced plans last year to decriminalize heterosexual oral and anal sex between consenting men and women, but kept the ban on homosexual sex, infuriating the gay community.

While seldom enforced, activist Tan said that the statute alone is enough to keep gay foreigners away, regardless of their talents. Singapore is eager to become a cultural hub.

Au said he still regarded the festival as a success since far more events were allowed than rejected. Other forums and readings went on without interference. Even a sculpture of a man's genitals shaped from vegetables was left untouched.

"We would never have been able to hold such a series of activities ten years ago, Au said, adding he is hopeful of more easing of restrictions in the long-term.

Estimates of the number of homosexuals range from 6 to 8 per cent of the population to as many as 400,000.

"When gays from overseas regard Singapore, they figure it`s their money that is wanted, primarily through tourism," Au noted.

The government acknowledges gays serve in the civil service. Some advertisements for apartments are subtly aimed at homosexual and liberal heterosexual lifestyles.

Lee Kuan Yew, Singapore's founding father who currently holds the post of minister mentor in the administration of his son, Prime Minister Lee Hsien Loong, said in April that homosexuality is genetic.

"We should not go around like this moral police, barging into people's bedrooms. That's not our business," he said.

He subsequently said the law would have to be changed eventually to keep in step with the rest of the world, a statement some seized on as an indication that the government might move towards more liberalization.

"The government makes small gestures," said Au, referring to Lee Kuan Yew's comments and those by former Prime Minister Goh Chok Tong that homosexuals "are like you and me" and should not face discrimination.

"What isn't understood is how important gay identity is to gay people," Au said.

Actor Ian McKellen, in Singapore in July performing in William Shakespeare's King Lear, spoke out far more strongly than local gays dare.

"It's about time Singapore grew up, I think, and realized that gay people are here to stay," said the British star, who was in Lord of the Rings.

"Just treat us with respect like we treat everybody else and the world will be a better place."

7 October 2007
Deutsche Presse-Agentur

Tolerance on the rise for Asia's gays, but laws lag

Bangkok - Thailand's tolerance toward gays and transgender people is somewhat legendary in Asia.

Entire streets in Bangkok are dedicated to gay bars, the city's hospitals have become an international mecca for sex-change surgeries and Thailand's TV and film scene abound with 'katoey,' or transvestite comic characters, and gay love stories to the point of tedium.

Thailand's Pattaya beach resort is famed for its annual Miss Transvestite Pageant and the island of Phuket has been hosting a gay pride parade since 1999 with the full support of local authorities.

Yet when Thai gay rights activists earlier this year pushed for a mention in the country's just-drafted constitution, the 18th to date, legislators baulked at a clause guaranteeing equal rights for the 'third sex' along with other downtrodden folk - women, children, the poor and disabled.

'It was the first time in Thai history for the topic to be discussed legislatively, which was great, but finally it was a big abortion,' said Viroj Tangwanit, a well-known Thai gay activist. 'It never came to life.'

'Thai society is the most open in the world,' Viroj added, 'but officially, it is closed and narrow.'

That contradiction, more tolerant societies versus still conservative laws, broadly characterizes the gay-transgender scene throughout the region although there are signs of slow progress even on the legal level.

Asia's increasingly open economies have exposed them to global trends, such as exposure to the HIV/AIDS pandemic and access to the internet, which have pressured governments into new liberal terrain.

In communist China, where homosexuality was once described as a 'Western illness,' the government stopped punishing gays under 'hooligan' laws in 1997 and removed homosexuality from its list of mental diseases in 2001.

While it still bans gay rights activities, China recently allowed the establishment of non-governmental organizations to help fight HIV/AIDS and has turned a blind eye to gay websites like Chinesegay.net.

There are limits, however. Chinese state censors have denied distribution of several recent Western films with gay themes, including Ang Lee's award-winning Brokeback Mountain.

Taiwan has surpassed the mainland in its tolerance toward homosexuality. Since the 1980s, more than 100 gay rights groups have sprung up across the island, and Taipei Mayor Ma Ying-jeou and President Chen Shui-bian have both voiced support for greater rights for gays.

In 2002, Taipei began subsidizing an annual Gay Carnival, which attracted 10,000 people last year. Taiwan has also taken a step toward legalizing gay marriage by expanding the definition of the domestic violence bill to cover gay couples.

If it passes, a Human Rights Basic Law drafted in 2003 would allow for legalized gay marriages, which would make Taiwan the first place in Asia to legalize gay unions. Few countries in the world have so far have done the same thing: the Netherlands, Belgium, Spain, Canada and South Africa.

In Japan, the government agreed to allow transgender people to change their birth sex on their national identity cards in 2004, a bureaucratic breakthrough that thousands of transgender people in Thailand are now fighting for, partly to exclude themselves from conscription into the army.

Singapore sends mixed signals on homosexuality. While consensual sex between men is still outlawed and punishable by a jail term, the government allows movies with gay themes 'as long as the gay life is not depicted as desirable.' Punishments of homosexual acts are practically unheard of unless a minor or rape is involved, but many gay public events are banned. A gay picnic and a five-kilometre dash were prohibited to prevent participants from 'politicizing their cause,' authorities said.

In Asia's predominantly Islamic countries, such as Brunei, Indonesia and Malaysia, gay relations are still taboo, at least for Muslims, as was highlighted by the much-politicized 2000 sentencing for sodomy of Malaysia's former deputy premier Anwar Ibrahim.

But for non-Muslims, who make up 40 per cent of Malaysia's population, there are small glimmers of legal leniency.

In February 2005, for instance, a Malaysian court allowed a non-Muslim male transsexual to change the gender on his identity card after he showed medical proof of a sex change by surgery.

In spite of that small milestone, the Malaysian government still refuses to acknowledge marriages in which one of the partners has undergone a sex-change surgery, saying they are same-sex unions and, therefore, illegal.

Similar laws apply in Indonesia, the country with the world's largest Muslim population, which is remarkably more tolerant toward the gay and transgender community than one might suspect.

'The only legal discrimination against gays is they can't legally get married because Indonesian marriage law only recognizes a man and woman as able to get married,' said Dede Utomo, a sociology lecturer from Airlangga University in Surabaya. Utomo, who is openly gay, is the founder of the gay support group GAYa Nusantara.

Indonesian gays were admittedly targeted by Islamic fundamentalists from 1997 to 2005, but Utomo looked back at the discrimination philosophically.

'These are the same groups who attacked nightclubs and bars, etcetera, such as in Yogyakarta, Solo and South Sulawesi, but funny enough, they would take bribes and cancel their attack if we gave them enough money,' he said. 

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