The intense public debate leading up to the parliamentary sessions of 22 and 23 October contributed immensely to clarifying the issues for Singaporeans in general, and as I have always known, the more opportunities people have to apply their minds to it, the more likely they will take a stand for non-discrimination. I have faith in the inherent fairness of people.

While we didn't get Section 377A repealed, it was a small price to pay for the huge gains that were made. Aside from shifting public opinion, we saw three People's Action Party Members of Parliament speak out in favour of repeal. Just a few months back, we didn't dare to think any MP from the ruling party would.

This is not counting the indomitable Nominated Member of Parliament Siew Kum Hong who tabled the petition in parliament.

The other huge gain was in showing up the weakness of the opposing arguments. We had Thio Li-Ann, whom I believe the anti-gay side see as their primary spokesperson, reduced to making some of the most ludicrous arguments in the legislature, and attempting to appeal emotively by describing the sexual act of rimming -- which heterosexuals do as much as homosexuals.

I intend to analyse the speeches one by one in due course, when they are published in the Hansard, the official parliamentary reports. By that time, people may have lost interest in the subject, I know, but I hope to do it for future reference. Meanwhile, if there are any readers (law or philosophy students?) out there who wish to submit for publication on Yawning Bread analyses of your own of any parliamentary speech, you're most welcome.

* * * * *

 
So what was the blunder?

It was a political blunder by the PAP, putting themselves in a position where they knew it was a bad law, but were still unable to do anything about it. The price of a myopic decision way back in 2003 to try to distinguish between heterosexual and homosexual sodomy is now being paid.

Peter Schwartz, an image consultant who was here recently at the invitation of the government-linked Singapore International Foundation told his audience that our homosexual laws hurt our international image.

Despite its many technological and scientific accomplishments, Singapore still suffers from a major image problem, said Mr Peter Schwartz, co-founder and chairman of the Global Business Network.

"People in the industrialised world don't know very much about Singapore other than the trivial and the silly stuff like the banning of chewing gum and your homosexual laws," said Mr Schwartz, 61, a key adviser to businesses and governments around the world. And yet, this detracted from the profound achievements of Singapore over the last 40 years, he said. Singaporeans were, he observed, more tolerant of gays than what the law allows and the reputation of the country would be hugely enhanced if there was, for example, more room for dissent.

-- Today newspaper, 11 Oct 2007,
Silly stuff that hurts the image

And it's hurting even more now, as news about the failure to repeal 377A is making its way around the world. Here is one out of many examples:

Singapore's parliament has voted against a proposal to decriminalise sex between men, despite receiving a petition signed by thousands of people.

[snip]

Prime Minister Lee Hsien Loong said the government did not consider gays to be a minority with minority rights. In a rare speech to parliament, he said Singapore was a conservative society, and he wanted to keep it so.

-- BBC, 23 Oct 2007, Singapore retains its gay sex ban

Once again, we reinforce our image as a puritanical, intolerant, undemocratic blister. Blisters always invite poking and puncturing.

* * * * *

 
If you recall, it all began with the Anis Abdullah case in November 2003, in which he was jailed 2 years under Section 377 of the Penal Code for receiving a blowjob from a teenage girl. See the 2004 article The blowjob that blew down our oral sex law. There was a public outcry about such an archaic law ("carnal intercourse against the order of nature") and soon after, on 6 January 2004, Minister of State for Home Affairs Ho Peng Kee told Parliament that

Sections 377 and 377A are being examined as part of this review. Current societal norms will be taken into account in examining these sections. For section 377, one option being considered is to decriminalise consensual oral sex between a male and female so long as it is done in private and both of them are above 16 years of age.

(Reported in the article Anis Abdullah redux)

People Like Us, immediately spotting the potential for institutionalising further discrimination in law, sent an open letter to each and every member of parliament. Unsurprisingly, all the MPs contacted by the Straits Times for their response, dismissed the complaint out of hand. See What if your own son or daughter is gay?

The government took 3 years to complete its review of the Penal Code. In that period, there was relative quietness over the gay issue, offering the government a chance to reconsider Ho Peng Kee's careless words while saving some face.

It chose to tough it out. Or maybe didn't realise how tough it would be. In November 2006, it released its proposed amendments to the Penal Code, indicating clearly that while Section 377 would be repealed, 377A would stay. The battle was joined.

Hindsight should tell you the smart thing to do would have been to slip the repeal of 377A alongside repeal of 377. After all, when Ho Peng Kee told Parliament on 6 January 2004 that "The fact is there has not been any prosecution for consensual oral sex in private between a male and female for many years, except in cases involving minors or those who are physically or mentally vulnerable", the same was also true of Section 377A, as we would later hear the government saying. The same justification was there for the using.

In addition, it would have been very easy for the government to simply argue that repealing one but not the other would be blatantly discriminatory; justice would not be served. If heterosexuals want oral and anal sex repealed in the aftermath of the Anis Abdullah case, then it should be repealed for all. Simple.

But no, the government chose to put themselves into a twist, a choice that I now suspect some ministers deeply regret. They foolishly wedged themselves into a "no win" situation and generated more bad press for Singapore all over the world.

The ministers and their civil servants reviewing the Penal Code probably failed in 2003, and all the way to November 2006 when the consultation paper was released, to anticipate how fast Singapore society and the world was changing. They probably never imagined that the gay voice that they summarily dismissed in January 2004 would within 3 years be a roar, with plenty of straight supporters too. Very likely, they failed to assign importance to the fact that other countries were moving well beyond repeal to non-discrimination laws and gay marriage, so that by comparison, keeping gay sex criminal would be seen almost like keeping slavery.

However, once the government committed itself to retaining 377A in the consultation paper, it couldn't afford to lose face by changing their minds midstream in response to significant shifts in public opinion, or even better logical arguments.

This failure to anticipate changing conditions is a classic problem in organisational behaviour: the result of groupthink and the tendency to recruit from a limited pool of like-minded people, in this case, social conservatives. Conservatives, by their nature, not only resist change, but also tend to deny the possibility of change overtaking them.

And so, despite the government's preference for keeping "contentious" issues, especially one with religious undercurrents, off the agenda -- as seen by how they ban speech and assembly with the slightest risk of controversy -- the hapless prime minister himself was compelled to speak up in Parliament over the Penal Code, not a piece of legislation that would normally require prime ministerial intervention. Moreover, he found himself speaking, not on the 101 different aspects of the omnibus Penal Code ranging from murder to credit card theft to organising sex tours, but almost exclusively on one subject: homosexuality.

And what did he say? Basically, he reiterated that Singapore society was still mostly conservative; yet minutes later in the same speech, he contradicted himself, pointing out that the anti-repeal lobby didn't represent the majority. 

"... the majority of Singaporeans, well, it is something which they are aware of, but it's not at the top of their consciousness -- including I would say, among them, a significant number of gays themselves. 

[snip]

"Also I would say amongst the Chinese-speaking community in Singapore -- Chinese-speaking Singaporeans -- they are not as strongly engaged either for removing 377A or against removing 377A."

-- Straits Times, 24 Oct 2007, Why we should
leave Section 377A alone: PM

Still, in the end, he urged Parliament to "keep this balance, leave Section 377A alone"; in so doing, he found himself making arguments that are full of holes. I will deal with them in a separate commentary.

His uncomfortable position need not have arisen if his government had been less burdened by its own insularity and instinctive conservatism in the first place. Singapore's bad international reputation need not be reinforced if his ministers and civil servants had had a bit more political acumen to tack their way past a foreseeable storm, though, most likely, they didn't even foresee the storm. With practised disregard of alternative actors and causes -- not just gay ones -- and complacent tunnel vision, they never saw the social weather changing till it hit them.

© Yawning Bread