PINK DOT 2013: HOME - 29 JUNE 2013 (by pinkdotsg)
Promo for Pink Dot 2013 in Singapore.
“Can every Singaporean truly call this country “home”? That is one of the many questions posed by this video, accompanied by Dick Lee’s own version of his popular National Day song. What does it mean to live in a place where we can all belong?
Gary & Kenneth - 15 years (by Equality SG)
Gary and Kenneth, a Singaporean gay couple of 15 years, have filed a constitutional challenge against Section 377A of the Singapore Penal Code, which criminalises sex between gay men.
Singapore is one of the few Asian countries, and the only advanced economy in the world, which still criminalises homosexuality.
The statute of S377A, argued Mr Tan’s lawyer, Mr M Ravi, is “inherently absurd, arbitrary, vague and discriminatory”. He said: “There is no room for doubt that homosexual men are normal, productive, contributing members of our society and yet 377A tells them on a daily basis that their identity renders them criminals.”
…
“Criminalising a minority group for who they are does not advance public morality in Singapore. It merely perpetuates prejudice, which is quite a different thing,” he added.
I like the way Singaporean’s have found a way to celebrate pride and diversity in such a subversive manner. The Pink Dot has grown from about 2,500 participants in 2009 to over 15,000 in 2012 in a country where gay sex is illegal. As noted at the bottom of this article, the ban on gay sex is currently being challenged in the High Court.
Q.
Speaker’s Corner at Hong Lim Park in Singapore will once again turn a rosy hue for Pink Dot, which will be on Saturday 29 June this year.
Like last year, those who believe that everyone should have the ‘freedom to love’ with gather at dusk with pink lights to form a dot showing there is support for LGBT rights in socially conservative Singapore.
The festival has grown exponentially since it started 2009 when 2,500 people turned out to show support. Last year there were 15,000 people so that the dot over-flowed out of the small park.
The organizers had hoped that the government would allow the festival to move into a larger space this year, but that didn’t happen. Speaker’s Corner at Hong Lim Park is the only place in Singapore where people are allowed to protest.
In an interview with Gay Star News last December, Pink Dot committee member Paerin Choa said that if the government allowed the festival to move to another space it would be an offical stamp of approval. Sadly, that doesn’t seem likely to happen.
This year has the potential to be a significant milestone in the passage of LGBT rights in Singapore, with the law that criminalizes gay sex being challenged in the High Court.
This is a great interview that highlights some of the cultural differences between Singapore and the West. What I have always admired about the Pink Dot festival is how Singaporeans have adapted a very Western phenomenon, the Pride Parade, and made it their own. And by creating their own culturally appropriate LGBT awareness campaign they disabuse the notion that ‘homosexuality’ is a Western import.
I hope the Pink Dot becomes an eve bigger pink blob next year!
Q.
‘The first Pride in X country’ makes headlines around the world, but what if country creates their own LGBT pride event from scratch? That’s what activists in Singapore have done with Pink Dot.
Instead of a rainbow striped Pride parade demanding rights, Pink Dot uses the one place in Singapore where protest is allowed - Speaker’s Corner in Hong Lim Park - to spread awareness and acceptance of LGBT Singaporeans’ ‘Freedom to Love’.
‘Singaporeans are very opposed to protest, very opposed to parades and demonstrations. They don’t want to get into trouble, so a gay pride parade would not work in Singapore,’ says Paerin Choa, one of Pink Dot’s committee members who started the event in 2009. He talks to Gay Star News about the background, aims and affects of this wholly home-grown festival.
What was the background of the first Pink Dot in 2009?
Back then homosexuality was very very taboo: parents don’t want to know if their child is gay; everything was confined to gay clubs and bars; it was a ‘don’t ask, don’t tell’ society at work - people have double lives.
We have section 377A that criminalizes sex between two men. It’s something that we inherited from our British colony days. The UK repealed it in the 1960s. Hong Kong in the 1990s. But we still kept it and it contributes to the stigma.
The worst of all is our media censorship laws. Content that justifies, promotes or glamorizes gay lifestyle is banned. So basically if a gay person finds love and lives happily ever after - that story is banned. Brokeback Mountain is allowed, because the gay person dies and lives a sad lonely life. So you have very skewered portrayal of gay people in local mainstream media. It leads to an ignorance about what being gay is about in the general public.
Good interview with Lynette Chua, assistant professor of law at the National University of Singapore on the advancement of LGBT rights in Singapore.
Q.
“Kinetic Rain” Changi Airport Singapore (by ART+COM)
Mesmerizing. I’d miss my flight for sure!
Q.
In the course of refurbishment works ART+COM was commissioned to create a signature art installation for the Departure-Check-in hall of Terminal 1 at Singapore Airport. “Kinetic Rain” is composed of two parts, each consisting of 608 rain droplets made of lightweight aluminum covered with copper. Suspended from thin steel ropes above the two opposing escalators, each droplet is moved precisely and seemingly floating by a computer-controlled motor hidden in the halls ceiling. The drops follow a 15-minute, computationally designed choreography where the two parts move together in unison, sometimes mirroring, sometimes complementing, and sometimes responding to each other.
What a brave, and well spoken, young woman! Melissa’s question begins at about the 2:50 mark in the linked clip below.
Q.
A Singapore student challenged homosexuality education on a live news discussion TV show in Singapore yesterday.
During a panel show on Channel NewsAsia Singapore with teachers and a representative from the Ministry of Education, student Melissa Tsang questioned the kind of counselling a school would give an LGBT child.
In response to Mohana Eswaran, a teacher at Regent Secondary School in Singapore, who said she would refer students asking about homosexuality to school counsellors, Tsang said:
‘What kind of counselling are you going to give this child? Are you going to support this child or are you going to portray homosexuality or transgenderism in the light of deviancy?’
Tsang also pointed out that as homosexual acts are criminalized in Singapore, so teachers cannot inform students of the legal situation without making the student think that homosexuality is criminal.
Liew Wei Li from the Ministry of Education responded:
‘We understand this is quite sensitive, so we actually give you full information about the legal provisions about the homosexual acts. So we don’t criminalize homosexuality at all. No counsellor will want to make a child feel bad. You want them to have the full information.’
Consensual sex between two adult men is illegal in Singapore under Section 377A of the Penal Code.
An October 2007 review of the code repealed the parts of Section 377 which made anal and oral sex between heterosexual couples and lesbians illegal, but Section 377A remained.
During a long parliamentary speech on the matter at the time of the repeal, the prime minister Lee Hsien Loong said the government would not proactively enforce Section 377, but they would not repeal it.
The prime minister said: ‘If we abolish it, we may be sending the wrong signal that our stance has changed, and the rules have shifted… Therefore, we have decided to keep the status quo on section 377A. It is better to accept the legal untidiness and the ambiguity. It works, do not disturb it.’
Watch the clip from Channel NewsAsia Singapore here:
I really like the way Singaporeans have made ‘pride’ their own. And a 50 percent increase over last year, well done! Photo and video links below.
Q.
Fourth Pink Dot outshines previous records, with over 15,000 Singaporeans coming together in a dramatic spectacle of glowing torches, light sticks and mobile phones to celebrate the freedom to love
Singapore, June 30, 2012 – Tonight, over 15,000 Singaporeans turned Hong Lim Park into a sea of shimmering pink lights, for the first-ever night Pink Dot. For the fourth time since 2009, thousands of straight and LGBT Singaporeans came together to celebrate inclusiveness, diversity and the freedom to love, with the formation of a giant Pink Dot in Speakers’ Corner. This was a 50% increase over last year’s number, continuing a four year trend of growth.
An annual event that aims to raise awareness and foster deeper understanding of the basic human need to love and be loved, regardless of one’s sexual orientation, Pink Dot has become one of the most visible and well known events for inclusiveness and diversity in Singapore. It has inspired similar events around the world and has helped bring together Singaporeans in a way that promotes love without antagonism.
Pink Dot spokesperson Paerin Choa said: “Each year, thousands of Singaporeans come together to affirm their support for inclusivity and diversity, and it is a humbling experience to see the number of participants increasing and that so many are supportive friends and families of LGBT individuals.”
Songapore’s Pink Dot rally is on June 30th.
Q.
The Humanist Society (Singapore) awarded their Humanist of the Year prize to a gay man, Alex Au Waipang, for the first time on Saturday.
‘I think it’s very generous of the Society, though I would understand if it had been a difficult decision since I am a gay man,’ said Au Waipang when he was accepting the prize.
Au Waipang gave a rousing acceptance speech in which he explained why he feels his ‘gayness’ is one of his ‘key defining characteristics’, imagining a world where homosexuality was the norm and heterosexuals are marginalised.
Discussing homosexuality and religion, Au Waipang said ‘even ardent atheists can be homophobic.
‘All this suggests to us that it would be misplaced to blame religion for antipathy to homosexuality. In fact, when we reflect upon it, it is not religion that creates the antipathy, it is the antipathy that corrupts religions.’
Au Waipang said that sexual orientation shouldn’t be a big deal and ‘it wouldn’t be so if we applied reason upon empirical knowledge, which is the very essence of humanism’.
Au Waipang was one of the co-founders of Singapore’s first gay rights group, People Like Us, in 1993. He has been writing his blog Yawning Bread since 1996.
Homosexuality and political protest is illegal in Singapore. The city-state’s only gay rights event, Pink Dot, is on Saturday 30 June.
PINK DOT 2012: SOMEDAY (by pinkdotsg)
Lovely ad for the 2012 Pink Dot Day in Singapore. Have tissues ready.
Q.
COME MAKE PINK DOT: 30 JUNE 2012!
Lets all come together and make a GIGANTIC pink dot this year!!! I hope to see you guys there! ;)
