Faith (Part 2)

This is a continuation of the previous post but it was written in January - some things had changed from Nov to Jan.

It should be noted that "The finished Penal Code Amendments Bill, with adjustments for opinions from the public feedback consultation exercise, will be tabled for Second and confirmatory Third Reading in Parliament in the first quarter of 2007." Which is soon. :)

The January 2007 issue of the Singapore Law Review has a editorial and some contributed articles on the Penal Code amendments, do look through it if you can.

1. Responses to this social issue in Singapore (Key Debates)

In this part (II) of the paper I continue the discussion on whether civil unions or gay marriages can be legalized in Singapore, and the steps that can be taken to achieve social legitimization of such partnerships.

Since the submission of part (I) of this paper on 17 November 2006, I have had the privilege to participate in my personal capacity in the women’s focus group discussion on the proposed Penal Code amendments, organized by the government feedback unit REACH on 30 November 2006 [1]. It was explicitly stated by the REACH moderators in their introductory preamble that lesbian sex had always been and would continue to not be criminalised, although they acknowledged that section 377A of the Penal Code (pertaining to all sexual contact between men) was proposed to be left unchanged and that this was a point of dispute. One of the moderators was Ms Ellen Lee, cited in part (I) of this paper as speaking for the general Singaporean population in being averse to the removal of s.377A. The mood however was relaxed and friendly, with the moderators taking on the role of facilitators instead of being arbitrating judges, and a large part of the discussion was taken up on the sexual aspects of the proposed amendments. Five of the nine women who spoke made it clear before they began that they were attending the event in their private capacity, and spoke in favour of abolishing s.377A. The remaining four were from the local feminist group Association of Women for Action and Research (AWARE) and spoke both about abolishing s.377A for moral and economic reasons and about extending the coverage of the marital rape amendments.

Not long after on 13 December the mainstream broadsheet The Straits Times reported a summary of all the focus group discussions (Nadarajan, 2006) [2] in a manner that suggested that only AWARE had mentioned abolishing s.377A and for the completely inaccurate wrongly cited reason of lack of police enforcement at that. To clarify, the REACH moderators had clearly stated during the session’s preamble that s.377A although left unchanged was not going to be enforced as is the status quo, and yet passionate views about abolishing s.377A still continued in full flow after that. Lack of enforcement was never an issue in the ensuing discussion. In the Straits Times article, no views of any of the private individuals or AWARE members who had spoken about s.377A were quoted, nor paraphrased.

In part (I) I had expressed the hope that greater social acceptance of non-heterosexual Singaporeans would eventually be supported bureaucratically. In light of the Straits Times report, Singapore is only in the extremely early stages of legal acceptance of homosexual partnerships. The finished Penal Code Amendments Bill, with adjustments for opinions from the public feedback consultation exercise, will be tabled for Second and confirmatory Third Reading in Parliament in the first quarter of 2007.

2. Strengths and Limitations of this Response with reference to Gay Marriages and Civil Unions

Although the likelihood of gay marriages and civil unions being legalized in Singapore within the next 15 years looks bleak, a framework and a plan must be set up before any goal is to be set on its path to becoming reality. Blogging has become a popular method of expression for Singaporeans, and the government is paying enough attention to thought expression in this medium [3] that it has set up its very own blog for junior members of Parliament, at http://p65.sg/ . Bloggers’ views have been cited in the mainstream media and by journalists when questioning government ministers. One of the issues that can be raised in the blogging medium is therefore the issue of gay marriages and civil unions. Mr Alex Au, of the blog Yawning Bread at http://www.yawningbread.org/, is a noted gay rights activist and well-respected for his clarity of thought on matters not limited to gay rights. Local pro-LGBT organisations such as Sayoni, People Like Us, and Oogachaga have also formed communities by blogging on their own websites on the Internet. As of the present moment the Singapore government is not censoring any of these websites nor blogs.

3. Social Workers’ Roles – A Model of Stages

‘Begin where the client is’, goes the social work intervention axiom. Bearing in mind the current rigidly conservative legal and social environments of Singapore, the ‘traditional’ institution of marriage was defined in very practical terms for this paper, as the only existing definition of marriage in Singapore to be between a man and a woman, in line with section 12 of the Women’s Charter. The combination of ‘gay marriages and civil unions’ in this paper’s title is deliberately chosen to reflect the early stage of legal acceptance of same-sex partnerships in Singapore, as the distinction between ‘marriage’ and ‘civil union’ is only viable if acceptance of rights and privileges of homosexuals is already widespread. The recent October 2006 case of Mark Lewis and Dennis Winslow et al. v. Gwendolyn L. Harris etc. et al. (Supreme Court of New Jersey, 2006) will be used as a guiding example of the various stages of specific conditions necessary for same-sex partnerships to achieve full marriage or civil union status.

In the New Jersey case, firstly it was decided that the definition of marriage and its associated rights and privileges could not be defined as between a man and a woman because the denial of equivalent rights and privileges to same-sex couples violated the New Jersey Constitution’s equal protection clause (p. 22). A look at Singapore’s corresponding equal protection clause in its Constitution, as mentioned in part (I), states that persons shall not be discriminated against based on religion, race, descent or place of birth, and that “all persons are equal before the law” [emphasis mine]. The most fundamental document of Singapore law thus suggests Singapore law itself to be the initiating point for change; it offers no expository insight into the basic moral need of the law being constantly vigilant in at least considering the judicial possibilities of reflecting contemporary social mores. Neither does it offer any broad ideals for law review committees to act upon.

It may however be fair to say that the Singapore Constitution is too venerable a document to be open to rewriting and change, by association with the touchstone Constitutions of other countries. In what other ways then might Singapore law itself monitor its own changes and adaptations? The New Jersey legislature had enacted an amendment to its Law Against Discrimination (LAD) in 1992 to include sexual orientation. The LAD stipulates that homosexuals will not be discriminated against in “pursuing employment opportunities, gaining access to public accommodations, obtaining housing and real property, seeking credit and loans from financial institutions, and engaging in business transactions.” In comparison, Singapore fares relatively badly in terms of principles in common with the New Jersey LAD; the legal and social environment is pro-business and thus in business transactions sexual orientation is irrelevant. However in the pursuit of employment opportunities, access to public housing, and financial credit, it has no anti-discriminatory laws for sexual orientation or same-sex couples. In fact, as in the above anecdote on the Penal Code amendments focus group discussion, the not improbable suggestion to strike off existing homophobic legislation that is not enforced anyway was not well-received by the government authorities. Logically, if Singapore is to move towards acceptance of same-sex partnerships, section 377A has to be struck off the Penal Code. This would clear the way for other changes in legal rights pertaining to same-sex couples.

In brief, New Jersey enacted a Domestic Partnership Act in 2004 that allowed same-sex couples to have death estate rights, guardianship rights, tax-related benefits, medical visitation and decision-making rights, and spousal health and pension benefits. In the cited October 2006 case, additional full rights of marriage afforded to same-sex couples were as follows: joint property ownership, tuition assistance for tertiary education for children and spouses of selected groups, testimonial confidentiality given to spouse of an accused in a criminal case, spousal care and childcare leave benefits, revocation of rights upon divorce, duty of care to children from the relationship, spousal maintenance allowance after divorce, and division of assets after divorce. All these rights are well-afforded to married couples in Singapore, but not to same-sex couples. We may be able to introduce these rights to same-sex couples in Singapore in similar stages.

The matter of children in a family with same-sex parents can be operationalized legally and socially as well. Allen and Demo (1995, p. 119; cited in part (I)) [4] has an overview of how family research is turning away from the original paradigm of “benchmark family versus deviant alternative family” to embrace the diversity of family types now in existence. Herek (2006) [5] describes the legal recognition of same-sex families throughout the United States in a comparatively up-to-date review.

Social workers can advocate for these changes in policy.

4. Conclusion

Given that social change does not occur overnight, and that the lack of gay marriages and civil unions though bringing much pain to homosexual individuals and couples does not fare well in comparison with income inequality and structural unemployment issues in Singapore, it is not easy to describe how this may be desirable for Singapore in the long term. Singapore is not a country known for prizing its civil liberties above economic ones, but perhaps when that changes, the stage-by-stage framework suggested or modified by future events will come in useful in thinking about the issue of homosexual rights and making gay marriages a reality here.


References

[1] Another first-person account by Ms. pleinelune can be found here on the Sayoni site.

[2] Nadarajan, B 2006, ‘Feedback focuses on sex laws: marital rape laws inadequate, say some; continued outlawing of gay sex also questioned’, The Straits Times, 13 December 2006. I am unable to find the fulltext version of this article online and instead provide a link to Mr Wang's partial extract of it here.

[3] Also see Ms. Kitana, 'Why the internet is the most powerful voice we have', 26 October 2006. <http://kitana.wordpress.com/2006/10/26/why-the-internet-is-the-most-powerful-voice-we-have/>

[4] Allen, KR & Demo, DH 1995, ‘The families of lesbians and gay men: a new frontier in family research’, Journal of Marriage and the Family, vol. 57, no. 1, pp. 111-127.

[5] Herek, GM 2006, ‘Legal recognition of same-sex relationships in the United States: a social science perspective’, American Psychologist, vol. 61, no. 6, pp. 607-621.