Newspapers get into the preaching act

The movie 'The 40-year-old virgin' is now playing in theatres. It's a comedy about a guy coming fast into middle age who has not had a woman. His friends try their darnest to help him.

In a moment of desperation, perhaps, to fill their pages, both the New Paper and the Straits Times decided to run stories on a similar premise. But unlike Hollywood, here in Singapore it is against the state ideology to poke fun at people who have never had sex. Our media are not supposed to cause offence and dissension.

So, taking off from a celluloid comedy, what we got was an over-earnest sermon on the virtues of abstinence. And we complain when foreigners say Singapore is a humourless place.

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In the pullout section 'Urban' of the Straits Times, 13 October 2005, two men were profiled.

The first was Gary Sim, aged 31. The newspaper gave him the space to advertise his faith. He was quoted saying, "sex is for procreation and also something a man should do only with his wife."

"If people ask, I'll tell them I'm saving myself for something special, and if they find that funny, that shows they're pretty immature."

A great put-down of everyone who disagrees with him.

Then he engages in the Asian-values superiority complex. He told the Straits Times that among Westerners, "boasting about sexual conquests is more prevalent and is a way for men to prove their manhood." Does he know anything about male-centred Asian societies?

I guess not. Because he is Christian. In Asia, evangelical Christianity is taught in a certain way. Besides condemning all sorts of sins and "decadent lifestyles" in common with Christian churches in the West, there is also the parallel indoctrination whereby converts are taught to dismiss as effete, idolatrous and corrupted, anything and everything indigenously Asian. It's an essential part of the process of cultural unlearning in order that they be part of an ideological movement that has White Americans as leaders, and that is based on conservative White American mores.

In the process, they pick up something of the conservative White American's ignorance and disdain for anything indigenously Asian, including the stereotype of Asian men as somehow less than masculine.

Gary Sim is a member of the evangelical City Harvest Church. He said he's leaving it up to God whether he will have to wait 10, 20 30 years or forever for his big day.

The second person interviewed by the Straits Times was Jerry Ong, aged 29. He was introduced as the program manager for Focus On The Family, a "community-based homegrown charity dedicated to strengthening families. It also runs abstinence workshops for youth," to quote the blurb as printed in the newspaper.

Homegrown? And not a word about Christianity in its blurb? 

Focus On The Family (FOTF) is big, big, big in the United States, led by a White American male called James Dobson. It preaches an extremist form of Christianity that goes all hysterical about abortion and homosexuality.

Are we expected to believe that it was mere coincidence that the American FOTF and the Singapore FOTF shared the same name? Is it also a coincidence that Tan Thuan Seng, the President and Founder of the local FOTF is giving a talk (in his FOTF capacity) about the 'Christian stand' on homosexual relationships at a forum organised by the Graduates' Christian Fellowship on 13 October 2005?

'Homegrown' gives the impression that it is separate from and unrelated to FOTF in the US. It is not. But why the need to distance itself from the bigger and more famous organisation? Why they need, every time FOTF Singapore describes itself, to avoid mentioning that it is a Christian group?

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The New Paper had done a similar feature on Sunday 9 October 2005. The same story appeared in its online edition on 10 October.

It profiled two persons, the first of which was Andrew Thomas, aged 50, born in London but now a permanent resident in Singapore.

The paper described Thomas as a devout Christian. He himself said he had to struggle to maintain his virginity, and in the New Paper's words, "He added that if it had not been for 'God's intervention', his resistance would have long crumbled."

This is an extremely conflicted person who some years back published a book called Freedom of Choice in which every essay preached self-hate. It even railed against masturbation. Its basic premise was that gays and lesbians had the freedom to be become ex-gay.

Sure, and every person who is Chinese has the freedom to turn ex-Chinese.

In a seminar 1 or 2 years ago organised by the churches to preach a homophobic message -- homosexuality is sinful and against God's will, repent, repent, repent! -- Lung was one of the speakers, giving his own life story as an example of someone seeing the light.

Yet he admits he was a transsexual. A friend of mine went to the same school as he did (St Joseph's) and saw him after graduation too. My friend told me that he used to go around in drag.

Now, why is a transsexual posing as some expert on homosexuality, telling his life story as some kind of instructive example? Homosexuality and transsexuality are different things. It's like getting a Nigerian to tell people what it feels like to be Chinese. And how, seeing the light, he turned into a White American to boot.

Coming back to the point, now we have a newspaper holding him up as a heterosexual living the pure life of a virgin until marriage.

It sounds like comic parody, outdoing the Hollywood movie, but this is Singapore, and the story was meant to be taken seriously.

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What the two newspapers failed to underscore was that all their examples of sex-abstainers were a certain kind of Christian. Their behaviour is being driven by their religion. They themselves make no bones about that.

Thus, in putting out such feature spreads, containing their profiles, yet with no counterviews, the newspapers were inadvertently helping to propagate conservative Christian mores.

Is this balanced journalism? I think not. Responsible journalism would have required them to highlight that their sample was extremely skewed and to offer space to those who would contest their views.

Despite what American society may think -- and America is a rather untypical Western country, because it is unusually religious -- sex is not universally seen as contrary to good morals.

It is in fact a peculiar obsession of Christianity and its cousins Judaism and Islam, all three of which share the same roots.

Furthermore, this heightened sexophobia is unique to modern fundamentalist Christianity. While Islam may share similar principles about the undesirability of sexual promiscuity, it doesn't get as worked up about the issue as the fundamentalist Christians. The former take a rather worldly view that, well, it happens, as do the more established churches in Europe.

In fact, it is only in the last 10 years or so that an organised campaign to promote abstinence has emerged from the American Bible Belt.

It therefore doesn't surprise me that when our local newspapers go out to find interviewees who believe in abstinence until marriage and who practice such a belief, all they can find are fundamentalist Christians.

Other (and far more numerous) Singaporeans simply don't think it is a big deal.

These newspaper features, in profiling only fundamentalist Christians, in effect promote a sectarian point of view, that abstinence from sex until marriage is godliness, and in so doing instill a sense of guilt in others. 

I am not saying that promiscuity is better, though I would also contest the sweeping Christian definition of promiscuity as someone who has sex outside of "traditional" marriage. I am saying people should be free to choose the degree of sexual liberty for themselves.

It is not appropriate for people of one faith to preach their sexual values to others. It is certainly not appropriate for newspapers to be the agents of such preaching.

Do I think the New Paper and the Straits Times have caused offence? Yes.

© Yawning Bread 

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