I was flipping through the pages of a glossy company brochure, when I read this. It was displayed prominently on a mahogany coffee table next to the 2006 Annual Report in the plush client reception area of a leading investment bank. As I waited for my last interview, I realized that leaving Singapore and moving to Hong Kong to join this firm would be the right decision.

When I first came to Singapore a year ago, I expected to be in town a lot longer. After a 3-year posting in Shanghai, I had secured a promotion to my company’s Asia-Pacific management team, where I would be jointly responsible for nearly two billion US dollars of sales across the region. This would entail a move to Singapore, which was where I wanted to be. I thought that I would stay in the role a couple of years before trying to set up my own biotech company amidst the glass corridors and intelligentsia of Biopolis.

Living a life more integrated with locals than most UK expats, I quickly became attuned to the politics surrounding homosexuality in Singapore. I was dumbfounded when I saw the authorities move in to prevent several innocuous and socially constructive events from taking place during the local low-key version of Gay Pride week. I was horrified when policemen took pictures of my friends and me during a picnic in the Botanic Gardens. I was enraged when I saw two plain-clothes policemen enter our church service to ensure that an order preventing a US clergyman speaking at our service about ‘Sexuality in Christianity’ was not violated.

I can’t help but feel that Singapore doesn’t want me. Yet I keep hearing about the need to attract international talent. I graduated top of my class at Cambridge University, and top of my MBA class at London Business School; I have a PhD in biochemistry from Cambridge, publications in the world’s leading scientific journals, an enviable 10-year career in healthcare, and was responsible for one of the biggest pharmaceutical deals in Asia. As if this wasn’t enough, in my spare time, I learnt how to speak and read Mandarin fluently. I wonder what talent they could be referring to.

And it goes further: in the last 3 months, I’ve had conversations with many close friends in my professional and academic network, where I’ve conveyed my discomfort with the atmosphere of intolerance. I know that in at least three cases, this has been a major factor in influencing their decision not to relocate to Singapore.

"Tolerant is what you are on a bad hair day – it is just not good enough." 
(Executive Sponsor of Leading Investment Bank LGBT Network)

When Section 377A was retained, after an all too brief debate, thus sanctioning the continued criminalization of homosexual acts, I heard many advocates in the government say that the law would stay but it would not be used. But that’s not the point – things cannot change whilst this obstacle remains, as evidenced by the response of the authorities to gay events. Gay people will have sex regardless of what the law says, but there can only be tolerance, there can only be the beginnings of acceptance, when this discriminatory law is removed.

People are changing; but without guidance from the authorities, it will be painfully slow. Governments are elected to do what is right, not just what is most popular – otherwise, we wouldn’t have taxes, we wouldn’t have Electronic Road Pricing and there would be no National Service. Indeed, most developed countries abolished similar discriminatory legislation at a time when the majority were not supporting gay rights; laws preventing race discrimination were introduced when the majority did not want change; even slavery was banned in the US and UK when the majority wanted to retain it. Governments are elected to lead.

"Gay Cambridge now seems so comfortable in its skin, so grounded, that self-advertising expressions of affection look about as cool as teenage love-bites." 
(From the article "Gay Cambridge", which appeared in the latest issue of the Cambridge University Alumni magazine).

Over ten percent of the student population at Cambridge University and London Business School belong to their respective LGB clubs. Is this the talent that Singapore can afford to ignore? In December 2007, Credit Suisse, Goldman Sachs, Lehman Brothers, Merrill Lynch and UBS sponsored the 2007 Hong Kong LGBT interbank exchange event. Is this the sort of talent that Singapore can continue to spurn?

I truly believe Singapore has a great deal in its favour – an unparalleled standard of living, a secure environment, a competitive workforce and a stable business climate. But the competition to attract talent is intense. Singapore will need every advantage it can get to retain its position alongside the likes of Shanghai, Beijing, Hong Kong and Taipei. Time is not a luxury that Singapore has – change must happen soon.