Gay civil servants, and what next?

It’s early days yet. I won’t call it a revolution, though the optimist in me is sorely tempted to do so.

Within hours of Time Magazine uploading their story "The Lion in Winter" onto their website, news buzzed through Singapore’s gay community. It was a feature article about the economic difficulties the Lion City is currently going through. It discussed the remedies that the Singapore government had in mind: fostering an entrepreneurial spirit, greater innovation and bringing in foreign talent.

But one paragraph brought many gay hearts to fibrillation:

Singapore will do "whatever it takes" to attract talent, says Vivian Balakrishnan, the government official in charge of the Remaking Singapore Committee. As part of that effort, repressive government policies previously enforced in the name of social stability are being relaxed. The city now boasts seven saunas catering almost exclusively to gay clients, for example, something unthinkable even a few years ago. There are a sprinkling of gay bars, and many dance clubs set aside one night each week for gay customers. Prime Minister Goh says his government now allows gay employees into its ranks, even in sensitive positions. The change in policy, inspired at least in part by the desire not to exclude talented foreigners who are gay, is being implemented without fanfare, Goh says, to avoid raising the hackles of more-conservative Singaporeans. "So let it evolve, and in time the population will understand that some people are born that way," Goh says. "We are born this way and they are born that way, but they are like you and me.

-- A Lion in Winter, Time magazine, 7 July 2003.

My eyes zoomed in on the word "born", for this marked a profound change in the government’s stance.

Our laws, administrative policies and censorship guidelines are all based on the premise that homosexuality is chosen behaviour: People choose to do wrong, and the law sees it as a very serious offence. Others, especially minors, can be influenced to become homosexual. And persons who choose to be homosexual, like rotting apples, must be kept separate from the good Singaporeans in the army and civil service, lest the rot get to the heart of the state apparatus.

In October 2000, the Senior Minister Lee Kuan Yew’s reply to a question on US National Public Radio, foreshadowed a shift in the government’s position. He left open the possibility that homosexuality could be a result of DNA, and if so, then the penalties must be reconsidered. See the article Radio journalists ask the gay question.

He said, "Once we conclude that homosexuality is also a DNA problem, then you've got to approach the punishment in a different way."

But it would still have been a "problem", and we might still be talking "punishment".

Since then, there had hardly been any statement from the government touching on homosexuality… until Prime Minister Goh’s comments in The Lion in Winter. That’s why it came like a bolt from the blue.

But were we reading too much into his comments? Some felt that we should use a narrower reading. His comments were perhaps only relevant to gay foreigners coming to work in Singapore. I didn’t think so. I don’t believe our ministers are so naïve as to think they can have quite contrary policies for citizens and foreigners. Yes, there could be differences in degree – which itself is a matter of concern – but you can’t realistically have one policy for foreign talent and quite the opposite for Singaporeans.

I was more concerned that the comments reported by Time were only a fragment of an entire interview Prime Minister Goh gave. Comments taken out of context could be very misleading. What else did PM Goh say? Might the PM’s office disavow the comments in the following days? 

Friday, 4 July 2003

The first report in the local press appeared today. See Box article. At a glance, it looked like damage control, just as we expected. The emphasis in the article was that the issue was just one of hiring policy. There would no change in the law that made homosexual relations illegal. There would be no gay rights movement.

Wanbao, the Chinese-language evening paper, carried a similar article on its page 2. It was headlined, "PM Goh: homosexuals already allowed to hold civil service posts." In brief, it said that even though gay persons could be civil servants, homosexual acts and pride parades remained prohibited.

On that same afternoon. Channel i TV interviewed Kelvin Wong and me. Unfortunately everything that Kelvin said was edited out. And they only used one line of what I said on their 9.30 pm news. That news item began with a brief mention of PM Goh’s comment in Time magazine. Then it featured 5 persons adding their very brief opinions. Ivan Heng, actor and theatre producer, and Eleanor Wong, lawyer and playwright, welcomed the Prime Minister’s words. For my part, I pointed out that it was long overdue. In the meantime, discrimination against gay persons had cost the civil service and Singapore a lot of talent, who had given up on this country and moved to Sydney, San Francisco, New York and other places. The camera then cut to 2 passers-by on the street. A 40-ish Malay guy said, yes, he is alright with the idea (of employing gay persons), because, after all – wait for this -- they too need to eat. Finally, the fifth interviewee, a younger Chinese guy, said, "yes, yes, it’s fine with me." He has no problem with the policy.

My friend, Russell Heng, and another friend (who works for another TV news channel) both said they found the Channel i report remarkably positive. Normally, Russell told me, the journalist would have been told to get some balancing negative remarks. To have all 5 persons interviewed saying pro-gay things was most unusual.

By this time, I managed to get a peek at the transcript of the interview released by the Prime Minister’s Office. My reading of the replies given by the PM to Time Magazine was a shade different from that of reporter Nirmala of the Straits Times. I felt that Nirmala failed to read between the lines, and assumed too easily that except for the obvious statement about now accepting openly gay persons in the civil service, nothing else has or would be changed.

I noticed the following from the transcript.

Firstly, it was PM Goh who raised the gay issue. Most of us assumed that it was the journalist who brought the conversation around to a gay question (as many journalists had done in the past). Not this time. It was a general question about how Singapore was perceived as top-down and too rigid to attract foreign talent.

To that, PM Goh replied that in fact compromises and changes have been made, though one had to be realistic. And then he cited the gay issue as one.

Secondly, while he did explain that it’s still an offence based on our criminal code, he also said, in a more overarching way, that the government was prepared to look into things which foreigners wanted. A little further on, the PM agreed with the Time correspondent that it was a process.

In writing her Straits Times story, Nirmala, the reporter, was reading the surface of the words and reporting the "now". I don’t think she tried to sense the drift of the conversation; if she had, she would have seen a penumbra of future policy direction. Or maybe she did, but might have felt too junior to stick her neck out and put such speculation into words. But I doubt it. It looked like she thought she had to write an article in keeping with the "conservative" ethos of Singapore. Notice how she dug up a 1999 survey by Vivien Lim showing that even younger generation Singaporeans had negative views about homosexuality. Whew! We’re safe!

Russell gave me a skeptical look. I think he thought my indefatigable optimism was making me imagine hopeful things from the transcript. His view was that Nirmala’s story quite adequately captured the Prime Minister’s meaning, and that her slant was the authorised damage control desired by the PM’s office.

* * * * *

Saturday, 5 July 2003

Zaobao, the main Chinese-language morning paper, carried a report quite similar to the Straits Times’ story above. It said that although gay sex was illegal and opposed by Muslims, the government would not go out of its way to suppress gays unless they arrogantly and openly push for their rights.

In the English-language press, there were two big articles on the issue: a front page story on the TODAY newspaper, and the formal editorial in the establishment paper, the Straits Times.

The points made by the TODAY story I had anticipated, mostly because I had spoken with the reporter as she wrote the story.

The Straits Times editorial, on the other hand was another surprise. It was way more gay-friendly than we've ever seen of the Straits Times. It deserves a closer look. See  Straits Times editorial: Gay tolerance.

Footnotes

See also the following newspaper stories, published the same few days:
Local gays, foreign gays (TODAY newspaper, 5 July 2003)
Employing gays in civil service a 'tiny step forward' (Sunday Times, 6 July 2003)
No Mardi Gras, says PM (The New Paper, 6 July 2003)
With this ring, I thee wed (The New Paper, 6 July 2003)
Do Singaporeans approve of gay marriage? (The New Paper, 6 July 2003)

Addenda

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