Bangkok has just had its first gay parade. I wasn't there (I'm not a party animal) so this isn't a report on it, but it got me thinking, especially as the same weekend I was attending a conference on civil society in Singapore, what gay parades mean for society as a whole.

The Economist Magazine has its McDonald's Big Mac Index, as its easy-to-use indicator of purchasing power parities when comparing currencies. Let me suggest, half in jest, but half not, that gay parades are useful indicators of the health of civil society in any country.

There is, as yet, no government in the world that wishes to be seen as "promoting the gay agenda" -- and I use this phrase very carefully because all gay people take umbrage at the bias inherent in it, as it paints a simple demand for equal rights as an unreasonable demand for extra rights. No government will risk the flak from homophobic opponents for organising a gay parade. Hence, gay parades are quintessentially bottom-up initiatives, flowerings of civil society. When you find a city with a gay parade, it says a lot about grass-roots activity in general, and the attitude of the government in that country to its own citizens' liberties.

Bangkok's parade was held on 31 October 1999  climaxing a week of various gay lesbian festivities. On the right are two reports to give you a glimpse of the event.

Groundbreaking though the Bangkok parade was, it was still peanuts compared to the Sydney Gay and Lesbian Mardi Gras, held annually every February or March. (See Stuart Koe's first-hand report on this). The Sydney event draws a few hundred thousand visitors to the city, bringing in over half a billion dollars in revenue. It is by all accounts, the city's biggest annual event and a major tourism earner for Australia. And it is privately organised.

Thomas Lee, whom the Bangkok Post quoted as saying that such parades would be considered illegal in Singapore, was, I think, not entirely correct. Our law simply says we'd need a police permit to hold a parade; it does not say that a gay parade must necessarily be illegal. Nonetheless, he reflected the widespread feeling among gay Singaporeans as well as straight, that there is almost no hope in heaven of such a permit being granted.

This pessimism merely reinforces the general apathy of Singaporeans for organising anything. At the end of the day, we're left with a vicious cycle: there's no chance of the government giving such a permit, so why bother to try.

It may strike an outsider as strange why there is so little confidence in getting a permit, but there is a history to all this. Our government has tended to be parsimonious about giving permission to anything that it does not approve of. It uses its permission as endorsement; and the public has learnt to see it that way. There isn't much track record of the government here taking the position: I don't agree with you, but you are free to do what you want.

This tendency to use permission as endorsement is very stifling to civil society because it reduces everything to Endorsed or Banned. There is no space then, for non-government activities to flourish if they aren't in line with the government's agenda.

Another side to this problem is the way the government goes into all sorts of activities and pre-empts bottom-up initiatives. For example, I was dumb-struck when I saw a TV program about how a government-affiliated committee is promoting a song to celebrate the millennium, and how it is getting all event venues to play the song in sync. The person interviewed in the program was a Deputy Director in the Ministry of Information and the Arts, which only proves to me the government's heavy involvement in such a hare-brained scheme.