Pink Dot is an annual, not-for-profit event
that has been running in Singapore since 2009 in support of the LGBT community
and promoting the “freedom to love”.
It is
perhaps one of Singapore’s most successful global exports, with Pink Dot events
held in many other major cities modelled on the Singaporean event. Unlike most
pride parades that focus on LGBT rights, the Pink Dot event markets itself as
focusing on inclusiveness through a family friendly carnival. At the end of
each Pink Dot event, participants form a large Pink Dot.
This
last five Pink Dot events had taken place without much fanfare. This time
around, however, Pink Dot 2014, held on June 28, stoked a significant amount of
online protest from religious groups, revealing the fault lines in Singaporean
society.
The
first flickers of potential conflict sparked in May when the Faith Community
Family Church led by its Pastor Lawrence Khong proposed a Red Dot event in
support of the “family unit” (defined in this case as a male and a female). The
church had proposed the event take place on June 28. The event was approved by
the authorities, but the church rejected its proposed relocation from the
Padang, which is just a s a short walk away from Hong Lim Park where the annual
Pink Dot event is held.
On June
20, Muslim religious teacher Ustaz Noor Deros launched the “Wear White”
movement in response to the “growing normalization of LGBT in Singapore” to
remind Muslims not to participate in the Pink Dot movement. Muslims were asked
to wear white to mosques on June 28 for the Terawih prayers on the eve of
Ramadan.
The
next day Khong, together with his church and a larger LoveSingapore Network (of
evangelical Christian Churches), joined the wear white movement.
“I’m so
happy that Singapore’s Muslim community is making a vocal and visual stand for
morality and Family. I fully support the ‘wear white’ campaign… I look forward
to celebrating the family with the Muslim community and I am pleased to partner
with them in championing virtue and purity for the good of our nation,” said
Khong.
With
temperatures rising, the Islamic Authority of Singapore (MUIS) released an
internal advisory to its mosques, advising religious leaders to adopt a
“non-confrontational approach” to the LGBT community.
Not all
Protestant leaders were against LGBTs.
Rev Miak Siew, an openly gay pastor of the Free Community Church, wrote
in an Open Letter to Khong in January, “the idea that ‘the family unit
comprises of a man as Father, a woman as Mother, and Children’ is not
biblical… Strong families are not
defined by their composition… what makes strong families is the love that binds
them… The repeal of 377A poses no threat to families bound together by love. It
is the continued stigmatization of LGBT people that you are perpetuating that
is a threat to families – because you have placed obstacles in how parents
understand their children who are different, and create huge rifts in these
families.”
That
same day, the Catholic Archbishop William Goh released a message to the
Catholic Church in Singapore reiterating the Church’s position on the LGBT
movement: “[The Church] recognizes that there are individuals who are attracted
to people of the same sex. Regardless of their sexual orientation, the Church
has always looked on each individual as being a child of God, made in His image
and likeness and is therefore worthy of love and respect…
Discrimination
of any kind is thus neither pleasing in the eyes of God, nor that of man…
However, the Church also believes that when God created man (and woman), He had
intended for them to ‘Be fruitful, multiply, fill the earth and subdue it’.
(Genesis 1:28) For this reason, although the Church treats each individual,
regardless of his/her sexual orientation, with sensitivity and respect for
his/her dignity, she upholds the view that LGBT sexual relationships are not in
accordance with the plan of God.”
This
prompted a Facebook reply (June 23) from prominent civil society activist,
openly homosexual Catholic Dr Vincent Wijeysingha.
“What
concerns me is the cynical attempt to portray the church as a compassionate and
empathetic organisation concerned for the souls of LGBT people,” he wrote.
“This is entirely at odds with the teachings of the church government at the
Vatican… Goh’s statement waters down the church’s real disgust for LGBT people…
The
Singapore episcopacy, in attempting to come across as nice guys intent only
upon the salvation of souls, has masked the church’s real attitude to LGBT
people. In doing so, it has further disfigured itself by the hypocrisy which
characterised much of its history. Let the Catholic magisterium come out and
declare its real revulsion towards LGBT people. And let them at the same time
atone for the thousands of lives their church destroyed by the mischief of
their ravenous priests. I will take them seriously then. Until then, I will
take no moral instruction from those who seek to police my bedroom while
turning a blind eye to the priests who lured little boys and little girls into
theirs, to rape and bugger them with the connivance and the complicity of the
episcopacy.”
The
sparks had become a flame.
On June
25 the National Council of Churches of Singapore (NCCS), a protestant umbrella
organisation of churches of various denominations, released a statement that
supporting the view of the traditional family unit, but urged “grace and
restraint”.
While
no groups had advocated violence, the organisers of Pink Dot announced that
they would be hiring security guards for the event to ensure against
troublemakers.
Opposition
to the Pink Dot event did not just come from religious quarters. In a letter to
The Independent Singapore one Vernon Chan, who had attended every previous Pink
Dot event, wrote that he would not be attending the Pink Dot event this year:
“My activist friends reported the organisers lecturing that this event is not
for them, not for the benefit of the LGBTQI community, but for the benefit of
appearing safe and unthreatening to mainstream Singapore and their straight
allies…. Why bother attending PinkDot if, instead of encouraging diversity and
non-judgemental attitudes, PinkDot organisers are the ones who promote the fear
and ignorance of real LGBTQIs, and their issues, concerns, needs, diversity?”
In the
end, the war of words was confined to the internet. The event went of with a
hitch, with a record turnout of 26,000 people at the Hong Lim Park. The wear
white event also went of without a hitch. It seemed like just another day in
Singapore.
This
event however points to a future with more conflicts over the family unit and
sexual morality in the city-state.
Some
online groups such as The Online Citizen and Mothership have published articles
in support of Pink Dot, while others such as The Real Singapore have found
themselves along the more conservative end. Comments on some of these sites
drew support from their own ideological adherents.
Singapore,
like much of the world, faces rising religiosity. Together with that is a
progressive change in religious demographics. According to the Singapore Census
2010, the fastest growing religions in Singapore are Christianity and those who
do not identify with organised religion. Among Christians, the largest growth
according to a paper by National University of Singapore Associate Prof Daniel
Goh is evangelical Christianity. Earlier in March, controversy was sparked when
NUS Associate Professor Khairuddin Aljunied described liberal Islam and its
support of lesbianism as “cancers” and “diseases”. His Facebook post led to a
petition by students in the University and he was forced to retract his
statement.
Earlier
in June, Mathew Mathews at the Institute of Policy Studies released a report on
religious identity being especially strong with the Protestant and Muslim
groups: 85 and 93.9 percent respectively believed that homosexual sex was
morally wrong.
Pink
Dot 2014 will not be the final flash point in this area of personal and social
morality.
It is
at this point, when the cracks in society are beginning to form, that voices of
reason are needed.
“[Views
on Homoexuality] will evolve over time, as so many things have, because after a
while my own sort of maturing process will take place with other people. You
don’t just live and then you cut off your ideas after a certain time. You keep
on living and you watch people and you say, ‘Oh that’s the way life is.’”
This is
the reality of the society; we decide what is in our interest and how the
people will react. Homosexuality will eventually be accepted. It’s already
accepted in China. It’s a matter of time before it’s accepted here.
Lee Kuan Yew, 2011, Hard Truths to keep
Singapore Going:
“If a
person is gay and seeks the Lord and has good will, who am I to judge him? The
Catechism of the Catholic Church explains this in such a beautiful way, it
says, Wait a bit, as is said and says: these persons must not be marginalized
because of this; they must be integrated in society.”
The
problem isn’t having this tendency, no. We must be brothers…
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