Fun Fast Facts
- 2007 oral and anal sex legalised for heterosexuals and female homosexuals.
- Article 377A makes it illegal for homosexual males to have sex.
- Entrapment (police decoys) is legal.
- 302 is a military categorisation for homosexuals, who are conscripted but receive different treatment. 302b includes categories of ‘mildly effeminate’, ‘severely effeminate’, etc.
LGBT-friendly organisation: Sayoni
- Advocacy group with social element.
- Works with CEDAW (UN Committee on the Elimination of Discrimination Against Women) committee to write reports every four years.
- Conducts “Queer Women’s Survey”.
LGBT-friendly organisation: Oogachaga
- Singapore’s only LGBT counselling service
- In 1999, Jason Wee, Steve Wong and Kenneth Lau started the support group for gay men in their twenties. They named it “Oogachaga”, after the dancing baby in the sitcom Ally McBeal.
- Conducts workshops and seminars for counsellors and other professionals working with LGBTQ clients.
W3JOY interviewed: Jean Chong from Sayoni
I think the gay community in Singapore, we are stuck, because there is not much progress. There’s not much progress in terms of policies and laws.
Our policies are discriminatory. Gay people have no visitation rights, there is no public housing…if you are single you can only buy public housing at 35 years old…more than 90% of the population in Singapore stays in public housing. This affects us because young kinds can’t leave the house…the safe space they can’t find at home…and the issue of violence, which is often not documented, happens at home.
At lot of us lead double lives. We are straight when we are home, but when we leave the home there are little pockets of gay life. It’s stressful for all of us.
We organise pride month in August every year…the police will come. They will write down how many people are in the audience. They will be watching what we are talking about or showing.
They try to censor us. If you are putting on a poetry reading event, we have to submit everything that is to be read. They come to see if you break the law at that event.
They are a lot more comfortable with what we are doing. They use another kind of way to control us, through a bureaucratic process. You need to apply for licenses and show them every thing you are going to talk about. In the past they even banned things like a picnic in the park.
The censorship law in Singapore where the media is disallowed from portraying a gay person as neutral or positive, so you need to be a pervert or you need to die.
The Internet helps because there are a lot of young people on the Internet and it tends to be a lot more liberal. The younger generation is a lot more open-minded.
W3JOY interviewed: Roy from Health Services and Oogachaga
There are research studies which show that Article 377A might not have an effect. In Singapore, people are not really aware of the law or of their Constitutional rights. What would be more of an effect is social cues and social norms.
If you look at a previous research survey that was done by NTU (The National Technological University of Singapore) in 2010, it talks about how 40% of Singaporeans are accepting towards gay people and 45% are not. I would think that this percentage would change gradually.
People don’t actually know that a law is in place, but it does have an effect when the political leaders or our church leaders speak up. That’s how they influence people to think that it might be wrong.
It’s human rights, it’s not something the government believes in anyway.
W3JOY interviewed: Yangfa, author of the book I Will Survive
Being conservative as a society probably means it will be harder to affect widespread personal change.
I remember talking to people who encounter same-sex partner abuse within their relationship. It’s hard for them to image what it’s like to come out and make a police report because there’s that fear that instead of getting protection from the violence from the same-sex partner, there’s a very fear that they might be charged under 377A.
There’s a very fear — how are you going to tell the health authorities that you got the disease from a same-sex partner. It’s a double-whammy.
It’s all thanks to the wonderful Victorian Penal Code that we inherited.
Published on: Feb 12, 2013 @ 2:54
Podcast: Play in new window | Download (Duration: 36:51 — 8.4MB)