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2003
Four weeks after Time zero
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At last, the media circus about the gay issue is dying down. There’s been some
3 to 4 weeks of attention, with an article roughly every other day, and torrents of letters to editors.
By the second week, the issue had been polarized into the Christian fundamentalist camp versus the gay camp. We’ve seen this many times over, notably in the Remaking Singapore forum. The main objectors were always the fundamentalist Christians, either because they professed so, or because you could read it from the references they brought to the table. But in every round, as the gay side piled on the rational arguments for secularism and inclusiveness, our opponents, having a hopelessly weak and narrowly scripture-based case to begin with, retreated into emotional absolutism. That’s nothing new to us. What was new was how intensive and extended the media focus was, this time around. Yet one wonders, was all this publicity just sound and fury, meaning nothing? Will no real change come about from the Prime Minister’s comment in Time magazine (issue of 7 July 2003)?
I have to admit, I was at first hopeful that it was a harbinger of some real, if small change. Four weeks on,
I’m not so sure anymore. In my mind, I saw three possible scenarios, and I will leave you, dear reader, to
sense for yourself which is most likely.
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Scenario 1: Unintended consequences
Prime Minister Goh must have given a fairly lengthy interview to Time on 5 February 2003. Out of that, Time quoted him three times in their issue of 7 July. The first mention was about the need to evolve to cope with the fast-changing economic environment internationally. The second was about moving up the value-added chain in manufacturing. The third was about now having openly gay employees in the civil service. The local media ignored the two earlier quotes. Understandably so, because the same points have been made by many ministers over the last few years. It was the third of the Prime Minister’s points that got played up. From what inside sources in the Straits Times newsroom told us, the publicity was not directed by the government -- they claimed they didn’t receive any calls from the Prime Minister’s office [1]. It really was a case of the journalists chasing a good news story. This view is supported by my observation that it was an issue only in the English press and radio. TV didn’t do much with the story. The Chinese and Malay media hardly mentioned it. The English press has commentators who wear their relatively liberal sensibilities on their sleeves, ready to air their views, and considerable space for letters, allowing the fundamentalists to rant. Radio had lots of call-in programs - no prizes for guessing what stupid nonsense callers came up with, though most who tuned in said, on the whole it wasn’t too unbalanced. Coming back to my point: if it had been a government-directed campaign, the other media would also have done their share. Even if not government-directed, it was a story with a life of its own. Once the fundamentalist Christians got wind of it, they filled up with fire and brimstone. In this scenario, the whole thing was government Public Relations gone wretchedly wrong. They had wanted to sell Singapore to the world by flaunting their old “new policy” -- which as the box on the right explains, was a creature of circumstances rather than proactive policy change. It was just an sales gimmick. They never really intended to make any real change. They didn’t expect Time magazine to use this as one of only 3 quotes in their article. They didn’t expect gay Singaporeans to seize on this as a basis to expect some real change to come. They didn’t expect the Christian jihadists to get fired up to the extent that they did. If this reading is true, then gay Singaporeans can expect no more. That’s the end of it, once the issue dies down. Nothing has changed. No change is planned. And we have to start telling the foreign journalists, look guys, you’ve been had. Don’t be taken in by the nice-sounding words. They don’t plan to change anything in Singapore. There was never any sincerity. To Singaporeans, we have to start saying, see how Singapore is going down the drain, due to the authoritarian “we know best” attitude of the government? We’ll still be going down the drain, because they still think the old way is best. If they make any change at all, it’s always going to be too little, too late. A trial balloon is a well-tested political device to see which way the wind is blowing. This scenario assumes that the government knows that they cannot just stop at passively tolerating gay employees. It they really want a vibrant creative class, if they want little bohemias as seedlots to sprout new ideas, then there has to be a lot more relaxation. Censorship must be substantially reduced, for one. But no one is going to believe that any change is real or permanent until the law is changed. It may not be much enforced today, but it is a powerful symbol of a mindset -- not just a mindset of lingering homophobia, but ultimately, of an unwillingness to grasp the future. Into the failure to change something as easy as the law (when the governing party has near total control of the legislature), people will see a continuing reluctance to ride the wind. People will come to the conclusion that we’ll always be doing things in half-measures, not quite going forward, not quite going back, but in end, missing the train anyway, as other, less moralistic, economies pass us by. Let’s assume the government knows this: they have to follow up with real changes. But they don’t know when to do what they feel they may have to do. So, as unexpected as the Time magazine furore might be, it was still a good thing to let the press have free play and see how the cards fall.
If so, then my dear gay compatriots, it’s up to us to keep pressing and winning the arguments. Once in
a while, we must kick up a fuss. It’s harder that we have to do it ourselves, rather than have the government
do it for us, but I think we can take heart. We won the Remaking
Singapore debate resoundingly [2] and we
can do it again.
Scenario 3: The first step of a game plan I was at first hopeful that this might be the case, but now it looks to be the least likely of the three scenarios. This is especially as the Chinese and Malay media didn't launch their side of the “campaign”, which suggests that there was no campaign planned. In this scenario, the government would gradually move public opinion through their control of the media, but allow the matter to die down after a while. Then when things were quieter, they might introduce a number of amendments to the Penal Code. Buried within the lot would be a watering down of Sections 377 and 377A, what we refer to as our “sodomy law”. Well, they could still have this game plan, except that they might leave the timing open. Much would depend on how much opposition was generated by merely mentioning gay employees in the civil service. It would of course be a disappointment if the government did not have a game plan like this, partly because I am gay, but more importantly, because I am Singaporean. If the government is not smart enough to plan a few steps ahead, have the amendments to the law ready in the drawer for the right opportunity, if the government does not know how, or does not have the guts to create the opportunity (and soon) for it to make bold moves, then I think this government is too hobbled by its conservatism to lead us into the future. Ultimately, I cannot help but think it does not have the will to defeat the anti-modern ideas that the fundamentalists of all stripes share.
And that will be the beginning of the end for Singapore. © Yawning Bread
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Footnotes
Addenda None
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