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The terms 'gay' and 'homosexual' in this article are defined as 'having a greater sexual attraction for the same sex than for the opposite sex'. Thus, a person happily married to a spouse of the opposite sex may still be gay even though he or she consciously refrains from or has never indulged in homosexual acts.
The articles in this category have been intentionally prefixed "Singapore gay..." instead of the ideally accurate "Singaporean LGBTI..." so as to render them more accessible to the lay reader who may not be familiar with technical gender terms, and to increase the likelihood of their getting higher-ranking hits when users of search engines type "gay" and "Singapore".
Statistical problems
It is unknown exactly how many homosexuals there are in Singapore or what percentage of the population they constitute. The main reason for this is that section 377 of the Singapore Penal Code criminalises 'carnal intercourse against the order of nature' which includes even consensual, private, adult homosexual acts. The penalties are either:
- life imprisonment, or
- imprisonment for up to 10 years with or without a fine.
As such, in any survey or census, no citizen would readily admit to being what is essentially, in the eyes of the Law, a criminal. By the same token, it is impossible to determine how many murderers, rapists or grand larcenists there are.
This statistical vacuum was not regarded as any problem in the past and no population census conducted in Singapore has ever bothered to quantify such people. However, with the increasing cognisance of equal, universal human rights, freedom of individual expression and the growing political and economic clout of homosexuals, this hitherto neglected aspect of sociological statistics will become increasingly important in the future.
The 2000 U.S. decennial census estimated (by extrapolation from hard data) that the proportion of gay men in America was 2.5 percent and of lesbians, 1.2 percent (source: Scientific American, March 2005 issue, page 20, 'Gay and Lesbian Census' by Rodger Doyle ) even though socio-psychological studies from the Kinsey era to the present day show that the same percentages of those claiming greater erotic attraction for the same sex were 7.7 for men and 7.5 for women. No conclusive explanation exists for this anomaly. Figures in Singapore may be broadly similar.
- Read PLU3's review of previous international studies:
Available statistics
In 2001, Fridae, Asia's largest English language-LGBT web portal, polled its gay and lesbian members residing in Singapore. Of the 595 respondents, 39% declared that they were "attached" or "living with a partner." 40% of the respondents who were in relationships had been with the same partner for more than 6 months.
A high proportion of respondents lived with their parents, while only 22% owned or rented their homes. This was despite the relatively high income levels of the respondents, with 50% earning more than S$80,000 (US$47,000) per annum – 20% reporting income levels of more than S$180,000 per annum, 11% between S$120,000 to S$180,000 and 19% between S$80,000 to S$120,000.
Historical background
See the articles:
Singapore gay culture
See the articles:
Singapore gay personalities
Historical
Paddy Chew- Singapore's first AIDS victim to come out to the general public (1998)
The first Singaporean AIDS victim to publicly declare his HIV-positive status, thus giving a face to a hitherto anonymous affliction which mainstream society considered remote from possible encounter. He came out on 12 Dec 1998 during the First National AIDS Conference in Singapore. He identified his orientation as bisexual.
His plight was dramatised in a play called "Completely With/Out Character" produced by The Necessary Stage, directed by Alvin Tan and written by Haresh Sharma, staged from 10-17 May 1999. He passed away on 21 Aug 1999, shortly after the play's run ended. (For more information, see the article Paddy Chew)
Contemporary
- Alex Au - Singapore's most widely-respected gay activist, regarded by many as being the founding father of the Singapore gay movement.
- Dr. Russell Heng - the most senior of all the gay activists, Heng was the first local academic to write research papers on homosexuality in Singapore and also one of the founding members of People Like Us.
- Tan Peng - Singapore's first openly gay artist and also one of the first Singaporeans to come out to the general public. His homoerotic charcoal sketches were featured in the Straits Times in the 1980s, the first for a local artist.
- Eileena Lee - Singapore's most well-known lesbian activist.
- Kelvin Wong - the main activist who spearheaded local gay Buddhist and sports organisations.
- Clarence Singam - the motive force behind the gay Christian organisations Safehaven and the Free Community Church, Oogachaga support group, charity work for the mainstream underpriveleged, and IndigNation, Singapore's inaugural, month-long gay pride celebration held in August 2005.
- Charles Tan - PLU3's effectively-bilingual, diplomatic, affable and unflappable spokesman.
- Alfian Sa'at - Singaporean writer, poet and playwright with an active interest in Muslim affairs.
- Max Lim - Singapore's first "pink" entrepreneur and impresario known by a wide swathe of the local gay community. He was the first to organise outdoor gay parties in the 1980s at such venues as the East Coast Lagoon and Big Splash, and non-Sunday gay disco nights at various mainstream clubs like Dancers - the Club in Clarke Quay and at Far East Shopping Centre. He opened Spartacus, Singapore's first gay sauna with a daily gay disco on the ground floor, and later, Stroke and Raw saunas along Ann Siang Road.
- Dr. Stuart Koe - Singaporean academic and entrepreneur, the founder of fridae.com, Asia's largest English-language LGBT web-portal.
- Dr. Tan Chong Kee - the impressively bilingual and academically-qualified founder of Sintercom (Singapore Internet Community), Tan has been a guest on several television panel discussions and documentaries, and the subject of newspaper articles on socio-political activists. He delivered the first lecture of IndigNation entitled "Same Sex Love in Classical Chinese Literature", in Mandarin.
(For more information, including photographs, see the article Singapore gay personalities)
Singapore gay venues
(For a discussion of places no longer extant where homosexuals used to socialise or cruise such as Le Bistro, Pebbles Bar, Treetops Bar, Vincent's lounge, Niche, Marmota/Legend/Shadows, Spartacus, Rairua, Boat Quay and Esplanade Park, see the article Singapore gay venues: historical).
Non-commercial/non-sexual venues
Presently located at #04-02/04, Yangtze Building, 100A Eu Tong Sen Road, not to be confused with the same unit number at Pearls Centre with which it is intimately linked.
A Singaporean Christian church which welcomes all people regardless of race, religion, gender, sexual orientation or economic status. It conducts Sunday services at 10:30 am.
Set up by activists from Action For AIDS (AFA) to inculcate pride in being gay and in staying HIV negative, it is located at 22a Rowell Road, above the AFA headquarters, in the Serangoon or Little India area.
Its main features are the extensive library of local and international gay literature, whose catalogue can be searched online on its website, and an archive of Singapore gay history and culture. Open once a week on Saturdays from 3 to 7 pm.
Arts venues
The following list consists of exhibition and performance venues where many works dealing with LGBT themes or by LGBT arts practitioners have been held. However, they are not exclusively used for such purposes.
45 Armenian Street. Founded in 1990 by the late Kuo Pao Kun, it is Singapore's first independent contemporary arts centre, centrally located in the civic district. Its sub-sections include a black box theatre, a gallery, a dance studio, the Blue Room and two multi-function classrooms. It was the venue for the nascent PLU Sunday meetings in the early 90s. The historic PLU 2 pre-registration discussion was also held in the Blue Room in 2003.
- The building at 21 Tanjong Pagar Road
A growing arts, entertainment and lifestyle block managed by Guan Seng Kee Pte Ltd, just next to Ya Kun Kaya Toast. The lift serving the upper floors has a modern interior but is rickety and painfully slow. The building houses the following establishments:
- 1) Space 21
An unrenovated 1950-sq ft art space and multi-function hall situated on level 3, the second home of Utterly Art.
- 2) MOX Bar & Café website on level 4.
- 3) The Attic
The topmost floor is a vault-like loft under the same management as MOX Bar & Café. It has a seating capacity of up to 150 people and is suitable for exhibitions, fashion shows and performances. It was the former location of the Sunday services of the Free Community Church (from 2002 to 2004) and Toy Factory Theatre Ensemble (from 2004 to 2005). Currently, it houses Bianco which contains a small bar and has an all-white decor. Dr. Russell Heng's talk When Queens Ruled! A History of Gay Venues in Singapore was held here on 16 Aug 05 as part of IndigNation, Singapore's first gay pride month.
208 South Bridge Road, Level 2 (above Xposé)
It provides exhibition space and management services to local and Asian artists, and photographers. The most active gallery on the Singapore art scene, it is a leading showcase of works by established painters like Martin Loh and Chng Seok Tin, as well as popular young artists like Trina Poon.
It was the venue for the very first event of IndigNation, Singapore's historic, inaugural, government-approved gay pride month celebration in August 2005. This was an exhibition of paintings by artist Martin Loh entitled Cerita Budak-Budak, meaning 'children's stories' in Peranakan Malay. The event was followed up with Contra/Diction - A Night with Gay Poets held on 4 Aug 05, Singapore's first public gay poetry reading session which was attended by over 70 people, with standing room only.
(For more information, including photographs, see the article Singapore gay venues: contemporary)
The future
- The greatest impediment to the achievement of absolute gay equality in Singapore is the rampant spread of HIV infection amongst Men who have Sex with Men (MSM). The Ministry of Health is contemplating measures to curb this exponential increase. These may include the closure of gay saunas. However, activists from Action for AIDS have drawn up guidelines for safe sex in saunas which they published in August 2004. If these are ratified by the Ministry of Health, it would avoid such a drastic eventuality which would impact a considerable portion of the economy.
- Looking beyond the immediate crisis, however, it is probable that with the intensive international efforts at developing a HIV vaccine and the discovery that existing drugs like valproic acid are able to wipe out latent reservoirs of HIV infection, a cure for AIDS will be found before the decade is out. This would remove the raison d'être for the current conservative backlash and the liberalisation that was witnessed in the years prior to 2004 would in all likelihood resume its normal course.
- Beyond that, advances in genetic engineering will soon make it possible for homosexuals to reproduce themselves in a true biological sense, by the recombination of haploid chromosomal complements from both fathers or both mothers (the latter already achieved in mice) to produce a child with the characteristics of both parents, and not merely via adoption or cloning. It will then be possible to create a self-sustaining gay civilisation in Singapore where every citizen completely enjoys equal rights.
- Peering even further into the future, Ray Kurzweil, the acclaimed 'restless genius' (Wall Street Journal) and inventor of the most innovative and compelling technology of our era like the Kurzweil Reading Machine, the Kurzweil synthesizer and advanced speech recognition, predicted in his book 'The Age of Spiritual Machines: When Computers Exceed Human Intelligence' that by 2020, computers will exceed the processing capability of the human brain. When this happens, robots will be intelligent enough to replicate themselves without human intervention and perpetuate ever-improving generations of themselves. Life will no longer be the preserve of organic chemistry. Silicon or other forms of inorganic life will become a reality. Sexual or even biological reproduction will be an option and not an imperative. When the concept of life on Earth changes forever, questions such as the morality of homosexuality or of homosexual reproduction will be as passé as the phonograph record in the age of HVD (holographic versatile disc).