Singapore warns US embassy over LGBT group

[reader]

From South China Morning Post

Socially-conservative Singapore on Wednesday said it “noted with regret” that the US embassy in the city state had co-hosted a webinar with a local LGBT support group earlier this week.

Multi-ethnic Singapore has strict laws regulating public assembly. Foreigners are prohibited from taking part in events dealing with a political cause.

“Ministry of foreign affairs has reminded the US Embassy that foreign missions here are not to interfere in our domestic social and political matters, including issues such as how sexual orientation should be dealt with in public policy,” it said in a statement.

“These are choices for only Singaporeans to debate and decide.” The May 17 webinar marked the International Day Against Homophobia, Transphobia, and Biphobia and focused on the economic advantages of LGBTQI+ equality and inclusion around the world, the US embassy in Singapore said.

“The US Embassy regularly works with civil society partners on a wide range of issues to build awareness and advance the human rights of all persons,” it added. The event was co-hosted with support group Oogachaga.

Under a rare colonial-era law, Section 377A of the penal code, sex between men is punishable by up to two years in jail, though prosecutions are rare. Previous attempts to overturn the legislation have failed.

The episode comes ahead of this year’s edition of Pink Dot Sg – Singapore’s main lesbian, gay bisexual, transgender and queer (LGBTQ) affirming rally.

The June 13 event, now in its 13th year and which has previously drawn crowds of over 20,000 people, will be online-only for the second year running due to the Covid-19 pandemic.

Previous in-person editions took place at Hong Lim Park, the republic’s sole free-speech zone.

Amid the rise in Pink Dot’s stature, the government in 2017 imposed restrictions on foreign participation, with non-citizens barred from taking part in the rally.

Foreign companies like Facebook, JP Morgan and Google which had previously been sponsoring the event were also told not to do so.

Prime Minister Lee Hsien Loonghad previously said he was prepared to live with the “uneasy compromise” of living with Section 377A “until social attitudes change”.

Along with the retention of Section 377A, which the government says it retains on the books for “symbolic” purposes but will not enforce, LGBTQ people in Singapore say they are disadvantaged by certain policies aimed at incentivising heterosexual marriage and childbearing.

https://www.scmp.com/news/asia/southeast-asia/article/3134091/singapore-warns-us-embassy-over-webinar-lgbt-group

 

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[PeterRS]

5 hours ago, reader said:

Prime Minister Lee Hsien Loonghad previously said he was prepared to live with the “uneasy compromise” of living with Section 377A “until social attitudes change”

"Until social attitudes change?" I always find this the most ridiculous argument, one that is continuously trotted out by the Singapore government whenever any discussion of the dreaded Section 377A rears its head. The fact is that it is all but nonsense!

The demographics of Singapore are roughly 76% Chinese, 15% Malay and 7.5% Indian. In the 2015 census, 18.8% of the population professed to be Christian, the vast majority being Chinese.

Let's compare this with other nearby countries with a majority Han Chinese population. Roughly 92% of Hong Kong now are Chinese. For decades the colonial government refused to change its version of Section 377A. It claimed that Chinese society was too conservative and did not accept homosexuality. After a series of scandals and an extensive consultation led by the Law Reform Commission, the law was finally changed in 1990. In 2006 the High Court lowered the age of consent for consensual gay sex from 21 to 16. Has there been any challenge by Chinese community leaders? Has there been any legal objection to the change in the law? Nope! Apart from a few religious sects, the Hong Kong public accepts homosexuality as part and parcel of life.

Taiwan's population is between 95% and 97% Han Chinese. As Taiwan moved towards greater acceptance of an LGBT community, there were occasional protest movements against a change. But most of the anti-change movement was led by Christian Evangelical Churches. Christians make up all of 3.9% of the population according to the 2005 census and the numbers have been decreasing since 1970. Christians led the movement against gey marriage. They failed!

It is interesting that the anti-gay movements in Singapore are led mostly by a community of sometimes scandal-ridden mega-evangelical Christian Churches. There is rarely any anti-gay public movement from the Muslim and Indian communities. So yet again, it is a very small minority of the population dictating what the government does. Yet increasingly, people in Singapore feel it is wrong for the LGBT debate to be led by religious leaders. In October 2019, a Report by the Institute of Policy Studies found that between 2013 and 2018 there was a "steep drop" in opposition to LGBT issues. The Report also found that, yet again, it was the minority Christian community that "were most likely to the amenable to religious leaders being vocal about LGBT issues. Slightly more than half said they could be comfortable with it." Yet up to 71% of those professing to belong to other religions said they would feel "uncomfortable."

So if about half the Christian community are pro their religious leaders advocating anti-LGBT issues, that means roughly 9.4% of the population. Only! In other words, around 310,000 are dictating the policy of the island state's 5.7 million citizens. It is about time the Prime Minister and his dictatorial government (just one party has ruled the island since Independence) took into account the views of the vast majority of its citizens and not the bigoted views of a tiny minority.

https://www.straitstimes.com/singapore/majority-of-singaporeans-uncomfortable-with-religious-leaders-speaking-up-on-lgbt-issues