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By Michael Joseph Gross

From The Advocate  November 2009

You’ve heard the threats — about how gay men in the shower might bring down the U.S. military with a wink, a pinch, or a flick of a wet towel. But where’s the truth in that? What’s it really like to serve alongside gay and lesbian service members?

I don’t have permission to be on base, and I’m nervous, because when I told veterans what I planned to do, they all gave me pretty much the same warning: Any soldier I approach could call the Military Police, who would escort me to the gates and kick me out — unless they detained me for questioning.

At lunchtime on a gray September Sunday, a retired officer drove me onto the Fort Lewis Army base in Washington, about 50 miles south of Seattle, and dropped me at the PX (military lingo for “post exchange”), which is basically a food court wrapped in a mini-mall that includes a GNC store, a barber shop, a video arcade, and a folding table where a friendly old guy sells wooden American flags he carves out of what he claims are 1,000-year-old logs. (A sign on the wall behind him reads, ask me how i know the logs are one thousand years old!) Until the cops come, I am haunting the food court, walking up to straight soldiers and asking whether they’ve ever been aware of serving alongside a gay soldier and, if so, what it was like.

I’m conducting this extremely unscientific survey in hopes that the straight guys will tell some stories that might shed light on the debate about repealing “don’t ask, don’t tell,” the federal law and Pentagon policy on gays in the military, which will be the subject of a Senate hearing this fall. DADT is based on the proposition that straight soldiers cannot work with openly gay soldiers. Supporters of the ban argue that gays, if allowed to serve openly, would harm unit cohesion, troop readiness, and morale, largely because their presence would make straight soldiers self-conscious showering or dressing in front of them.

Yet some gay and lesbian soldiers are already serving openly in the U.S. armed forces. Although last year 619 soldiers were thrown out of the military for being gay, the policy is selectively enforced. According to a 2006 poll by Zogby International, 45% of service members suspect that at least one person in their unit is gay or lesbian, and 23% are sure of it. In Iraq and Afghanistan, Americans in battalions of combined international forces have fought under command of openly gay officers from Canada or the United Kingdom or alongside gay soldiers from 11 other countries (among the 25 worldwide) that allow known gays to serve: Australia, Belgium, the Czech Republic, Denmark, Estonia, Italy, Lithuania, the Netherlands, Norway, Spain, and Sweden. Openly gay, armed military contractors serve alongside U.S. soldiers in combat theaters as well.

Such experiences have helped to move some veterans, including U.S. representative Patrick Murphy, a straight Irish Catholic Blue Dog Democrat from Pennsylvania, to work for DADT’s repeal. Murphy taught constitutional law at West Point, volunteered for overseas deployment after 9/11, served in Bosnia, went to Baghdad as a paratrooper and Judge Advocate General’s Corps attorney with the 82nd Airborne Division, and was awarded the Bronze Star. Along the way, he says, “I saw great officers, great leaders, who had to resign their commission because they wanted to live by Army values, and they feel that it’s inconsistent with those values to live a lie.” And he was deeply troubled when he saw talented soldiers being replaced by mediocre ones because of DADT: “My battle buddy in one of the toughest courses in the Army got kicked out because he happened to be gay. And the guy who took his place couldn’t carry his lunch.”

The first Iraq war veteran elected to Congress, Murphy is also the first veteran to be chief sponsor of the Military Readiness Enhancement Act. His personal history lends his position credibility, both in the Pentagon and in Congress. Murphy already has persuaded two dozen of his colleagues to cosponsor the bill, bringing the total to 172. He says he has assurance of at least 10 more votes, which still leaves him 36 shy of the 218 needed for passage.

It’s impossible to predict exactly how the movement for repeal will proceed this fall. Kirsten Gillibrand, the freshman senator from New York, convinced Senate Armed Services Committee chairman Carl Levin to hold that body’s first hearing on the policy since 1993. At press time, a few weeks after the death of Ted Kennedy, who was chief sponsor of the Senate bill for repeal, rumors suggested that a new chief sponsor of the Senate measure would be announced. But Senate majority whip Richard Durbin was recently quoted as downplaying the chances for a change in the fall session: “It may not be now, but that doesn’t mean it won’t be soon.” Whatever course things take, debate will be fierce, and probably ugly.

We should not be surprised if debate on DADT is shaped, as it was in 1993, by fearful, speculative raving. The far right will try to frame debate on repeal in hypothetical terms, asking what would happen if openly gay people were allowed to serve. Here’s a preview: The leading conservative activist on the policy, Elaine Donnelly of the Center for Military Readiness, has written that repeal of the ban would make “incidents of misconduct increase threefold,” including “male/male and female/female misconduct that undermines discipline and demoralizes the troops. These predictable consequences would harm recruiting and retention, and effectively destroy the volunteer force.” Last year conservative columnist Robert Knight told The Washington Times that work to repeal the ban on gays in the military would jeopardize national security by leading to a “Pearl Harbor moment.”

And this is polite compared to the blatantly homophobic rants on right-wing radio.

The question of what might happen when gays are allowed to serve openly is a red herring, and it must be called out as such. Experience already shows what will happen, even though those experiences are not widely publicized, because military leaders have succeeded in keeping them under the radar.

How does a straight soldier cope with knowing there’s a gay person in his unit? That’s what I’ve come to Fort Lewis to find out. I prepare for my afternoon on base by doing background research with help from Servicemembers Legal Defense Network, the Palm Center, and Servicemembers United, the leading organizations in the fight for repeal; through another activist, a retired officer who teaches an ethics course on base, I’ve contacted and spoken with a half-dozen active duty soldiers, reservists, and recent veterans who oppose the ban because they’ve served with gays and lesbians whom they believed to be great soldiers.

A few of them, and another former soldier that I met at a coffee shop near the base, told me that some units have an open culture of extreme antigay harassment — one that goes far beyond the friendly banter of homophobic slurs. (“Everyone in the military says ‘faggot’ and ‘homo’ every 10 minutes. It’s like a synonym for ‘buddy,’ ” one explains.) One straight soldier told me he was beaten up, ostracized, and abandoned by his unit (en route to Iraq, his unit convoy left him behind in Kuwait) after he told one of his friends that he didn’t think it mattered whether gay people got the right to marry. The most outrageous story I heard was set on an Army base in Germany, where an enlisted man ended up in the hospital after being beaten by a gang of fellow soldiers because he had effeminate mannerisms. When he returned to his unit, walking with a cane, his face covered in bruises, the soldiers who had previously beaten him proceeded to strip him, lay him facedown on his bed, bind him with tape, and put a hot dog between his glutes. Photographs of him in this posture were printed out and posted in the barracks common areas. Eventually, that soldier was dismissed under DADT.

Stories like these give me qualms about walking up to random soldiers and asking them to talk about their gay colleagues. I’m doing it anyway, because I think the most reliable data about the way straight and gay guys get along in the military is going to come from soldiers who have no connection to advocacy on this issue, and ones who have no idea whether they’re talking to a reporter who’s for or against the ban.

In the interest of eliciting the troops’ candor, I’ve decided to obfuscate a little. For camouflage, I got a fresh buzz cut. When I approach a soldier I’ll tell him that I’m writing for “a magazine” (only one soldier asks which one, and The Advocate does not seem to ring a bell with him). I refer to gays in the third person plural, not the first. I don’t identify myself as gay (and they don’t ask). If the soldier I’m talking with says “fag” or “homo,” and if he seems nervous about it, I tell him we’re in a P.C.-free zone; he doesn’t have to worry about offending anybody.

During my afternoon on base, I’ve decided to talk only to men, because rightly or wrongly, I expect them to be stronger supporters of the ban, and I want to hear the most critical argument against gays in the military that’s out there. I’m not approaching family units, to avoid triggering the “Daddy, what’s gay?” conversation. I avoid groups of guys together (the same way I steer clear of pro-gay posturing by not interviewing activists, I avoid antigay posturing by abstaining from situations where peer pressure could create a contest to see who’s the most gung-ho homophobe). I decide to approach only guys in their 20s, since any change in policy will affect them disproportionately: Almost 50% of those in the enlisted force are under 25 years old, and more than 80% are in their 20s and 30s.

And I offer everyone the assurance of anonymity to forestall anxiety about exposure. Officially, service members can give interviews as long as they are not in uniform and do not purport to be speaking on behalf of the armed forces. But several active duty soldiers I contacted through friends or other sources declined my interview requests, explaining that they requested permission to speak with me from their superiors, who discouraged them from giving interviews on this topic, even anonymously.

For all of these precautions, I arrive at Fort Lewis expecting to get stonewalled, at best. Punched, at worst.

I could not be more wrong.

It takes me about 45 minutes to screw up the courage to talk to anyone. Everybody seems to be on his cell phone or holding hands with his little kid or surrounded by five of his best buddies. Finally, there’s a guy alone. Mid 20s, earnest-looking, scrunched brow, with deep lines permanently and prematurely plowed into his forehead. He’s pushing a shopping cart full of the stuff you buy when you move into a new apartment: mop, bucket, trash cans, paper towels. He finished his first combat deployment in Iraq last week, he says, and he’s setting up his new place.

I tell him what I’m doing here and brace myself for the brush-off, a lip-curl, some kind of politely disgusted dismissal, but the guy does not flinch. Doesn’t blink. Just breathes like normal — it crosses my mind that I am far more frightened of talking about this with him than he is of talking about this with me — and “Yeah,” he says, “I’ve known a couple of homosexuals. One in my unit in training and one in Iraq.” These guys didn’t actually tell him they were gay, he says, but “I think everybody knew. They were pretty stereotypical, like into their appearance. One guy took, like, really good care of his fingernails. It was not a problem, them being homosexual.”

“Is that true?” I ask. “People must give them shit about it.” I ask about the rumors of hazing that I’ve heard.

He says he’s never witnessed anything like that. “There’s really no harassment that means anything,” he says. “You call people ‘faggot’ and ‘homo.’ No big deal.”

I ask what he thinks would be the biggest potential problems if gays were to serve openly, and he mentions showering and sleeping quarters, though the more he talks about it, the less sure he sounds: “Maybe you would need to have four sections — gay, straight male, straight female, lesbian. For the different genres, the different sexes. I don’t know. I would need to think about that.”

Then another question, to bring him back from speculating on policy to describing his own experience: “What about those gay guys in your unit? Was showering or dressing around those guys ever a problem?”

“No,” he says. “It really wasn’t.”

Then he shakes my hand, smiles, and says, “Thank you for writing an article about this. It’s good for us to talk about.”

I walk away feeling lucky. First try, and I’d found that one soldier in four who actually knows he’s serving with a gay guy. Odds are, others will be more resistant or more hostile, so I choose another friendly face for my next attempt. He’s wearing little spectacles, which means, I think, he must read books, which means he might be safe — but not too safe, because I watched him drive up to the PX in his Camaro. I swallow my dread again and give my spiel, but as I’m talking, he just nods and smiles, and in an aw-shucks Midwestern accent he relates the tale of how he left the farm and saw a lot more of Paree than he had bargained for: “At first when I got in, I could not believe how open the homosexuals were. But it doesn’t matter. I had one in my unit that was an officer, and we would joke around with him and say, ‘Hey, you pipe smoker,’ and he’d say, ‘So what? You got a problem with that?’ Everybody likes him. He’s good at his job. So what’s the big deal?”

He too shakes my hand and thanks me when we’re done, and I wonder how I managed to get two flukes in a row. For the next interview I decide to look for somebody who might be tougher. But this one — tight striped T-shirt, late 20s, and handsome in an unapproachable, stone-faced way — says, “A couple of the best soldiers I’ve known have been gay. One of them got drunk and got in a fight one night. He cleaned the guy’s clock and looked down at him and said, in front of a bunch of people, ‘How does it feel to get your ass beat by a faggot?’ He got thrown out over that remark. Which is stupid. It made me angry the way that was handled, because if a soldier is gay, it makes no difference to me. It’s a personal decision, and if that’s their decision and they still do their job, and the same policies governing sexual harassment and fraternization apply to them, then there is no reason for this policy to exist.”

The guy with the spectacles and the one with the stone face, like several other soldiers I spoke with, also said they saw one major problem with allowing gays to serve openly. They weren’t sure how a gay guy could make it through basic training, a process designed to beat weakness and even individuality out of new recruits and mold them into soldiers whose first thought is to obey.

No one was able to articulate very clearly why being openly gay would not fly in training, but the general idea seems to be that known gays might stand out as targets for hazing, which could make it difficult for them to bond with other soldiers during boot camp. “I think if the gays could wait to come out until they got through training, then everything would be fine,” one said.

What’s unstated here is that homophobia is a crucial part of the bonding process for soldiers. To acknowledge the presence of a gay man in a combat unit is to acknowledge that, potentially, any one of them could be gay, which could render suspect every instance of the intimacy between men on which military camaraderie is based.

But many soldiers, at least many of the young ones, are probably more conscious of these ambiguities and better able to handle them than conventional wisdom might suggest.

I walk up to a man with flat gray eyes who’s sitting alone, staring out the windows of the PX. On a 65-degree day he’s dressed for December — blue and green flannel shirt, gray sweatshirt, heavy jacket, and when he goes out later for a cigarette he pulls a stocking cap down to his eyebrows — he looks like the kind of guy who excels at multiplayer video games and has most of Donnie Darko memorized. Between bites of a burger and fries, he tells me that he’s infantry, barely 20 years old, and his first deployment to Iraq starts a couple of days later. In the three hours I spend on base this afternoon, among the eight Army enlisted men I talk to, he is the only one who says he’s never known or known of an openly gay soldier.

But he also says, “Homosexual conduct happens in the military every day. Everywhere.”

There is a long pause, during which I detect no trace of a smirk on his face, and his words hang in the air while I take them in. His tone is dead serious. “What does that mean?” I ask.

“Homosexual conduct happens every single day, all over the place, in every military installation in the world. For sure, in the infantry.”

“I’m not following.”

“Grabbing ass,” he says, like he’s talking to someone who speaks English as a second language. “Somebody grabs my ass every day. That’s homosexual conduct.”

I don’t know what to say. So I ask, “What are you telling me?”

“You have to be a little bit gay to be in the infantry.”

“What?”

He spells it out, talks to me like I’m an idiot, punching his words like a boxer hits a speed bag. This is the only moment on base when anyone speaks to me with what sounds like contempt — and not for the topic I’ve introduced, but for my intelligence. “You have to be a little bit gay. Gay, as in, you have to like being around guys, touching guys, being touched by guys, being pretty much only with guys. Not sucking-cock gay. Anybody tries to cross that line with me, he gets slapped. But if that’s what you want to do on your own time, in your own life, and you can shoot as good as I can, I. Do. Not. Give. A. Shit.”

There must be someone on this base who’s freaked out by gay guys. I have to find that person before the afternoon is up. So I start looking for the worst possible prospect, the guy most likely to blow me off, and I think I’ve spotted him, sitting at the far end of the food court. His outfit features the Confederate flag prominently. His T-shirt bears an image that could be the cover of Field & Stream. The sleeves have been cut off to reveal a pair of arms almost the size of footballs, one of which bears a tattoo so ostentatiously foreboding he could probably go straight to full-patch in the Hell’s Angels.

“The way I was raised, it was bad to be homosexual,” he says, in a voice as deep and rough as his thoughts are precise and measured. “My mom and dad do not approve of it, and they taught me that homosexuality was wrong. But I changed my opinion on it. In high school one of my best friends told me that he was homosexual, and I realized that it was just the way he is, so I came to believe that it was just another way of life. I’ve known a few homosexual soldiers and I believe they were good soldiers, so I have no problem with it and I hope the policy changes.”

“But your buddies must not all feel that way.” I’m trying not to let him see my frustration — my frustration at his willingness to accept someone like me. “Do you think any of them would quit if the policy changed?”

Contemplative, he nods. “Yes. There are a lot of people who, they have different life experiences than me, and they think it is wrong, maybe for religious reasons, and they hate it. I think some of them would leave.”

“Would you try to talk any of them into staying?”

“Well,” he says, “that makes me think of an interesting story. One of my friends who — I am a redneck, but he is the biggest redneck of all — it was time for his reenlistment, right around that time this gay guy in our unit was hitting on him. He was like, ‘I can’t deal with this homo shit, I am not gonna stay in this job if these people can get at me like this,’ and he was gonna use that as his excuse not to reenlist. And I said, ‘I know this guy, and he is a regular person, but a homosexual, and I know that if you just tell him, “I’m straight and I’m not interested,” he will respect that and he will not hit on you anymore.’ So he told the guy that, and the gay guy apologized, and now, I swear to you, they are best friends.”

It is possible, even likely, that I’d have had a chillier reception at a base in the Bible Belt, like Fort Bragg — or if I’d spoken with senior officers instead of young enlisted men. Military culture is a contest to see who’s best at following the rules. The ones who toe the line rise to the top. “This is a stupid policy,” said an Air Force officer who was visiting Fort Lewis that afternoon. “But I’ll follow it, because it’s policy. If they change it, I’ll follow that too. Most people will.”

I realize too that the same soldiers I spoke with might not have expressed such openness had our conversations not been anonymous and one-on-one, or if I’d asked their thoughts on gays in general instead of asking them to tell me about gay soldiers they had known. It’s easy to say the right thing when you won’t be held accountable, and it’s easy to like people when you view them as individuals. Wherever two or three are gathered, though, groupthink rears its head: Even good men may betray someone in public they might defend in private. That’s how a friend becomes a faggot.

Military culture evolves the way that any hard-line political culture evolves. Individuals almost never muster the courage to radically challenge the reigning order unless a role model, one with unquestionable credibility, sticks his neck out for an unpopular position. Israeli prime minister Yitzhak Rabin was able to make peace with the Palestinians because he was a war hero. And DADT will not be repealed until military leaders of unimpeachable integrity come out unambiguously against it.

In the past few years military leaders such as former Joint Chiefs chairmen Colin Powell and John Shalikashvili, who lives in the town of Steilacoom, bordering Fort Lewis, have called for reconsideration or repeal of the ban. No one, however, in the prime of his career, on the incline of power, who’s universally admired among soldiers has spoken against the ban with the kind of moral clarity that Patrick Murphy has mustered.

At the beginning of most conversations on base at Fort Lewis, I mentioned Murphy’s name and described his work for repeal. Practically every soldier I talked with knew who Murphy is, and almost all of them indicated that his leadership makes a difference in how they see DADT.

Murphy himself says that response to his commitment on this issue has so far been mixed: “I’ve spoken with current senior leaders in the Army — it’s a significant number — and they tell me absolutely that I’m right in what I’m doing here. They also tell me, ‘You’re in for a fight with some folks in the Pentagon,’ and they give me a heads-up, who’s doing what, and what their plans are.”

On the other hand, he goes on to say, “The first thing you learn as a warrior in the military is, anticipate where the punches are going to be thrown. I knew the opponents would come head on, but they would also come on the side as a diversion. An editorial in the local paper, The Intelligencer, ran under the headline ‘More From Murphy.’ The argument was, ‘When our economy on the right track and the nation is debating health care, why does our congressman care so much about a peripheral issue like ‘don’t ask, don’t tell?’ That will be the headline in a 30-second ad a year from now when I am running for reelection in the conservative district that I represent, where I won by 1,518 votes of 250,000 cast. I told my congressional team that I feel so passionate about this issue that people are going to be critical of this office and of me personally, and if you are not ready to withstand the heat that’s coming, I’ll help you find a job in another office. The closer that we get to changing things, the harder it will become. It will come from the Left and from the Right. The Left will say we’re not doing enough. The Right will say we’re focused on the wrong things. But just so you know, we are going to change this damn law. It’s going to come under our watch in this 111th session of the Congress. And not one person on my team backed away from it.

“I’m a nice guy,” he says, “but I’m not in this to make friends. I’m in this to make public policy to make our military stronger and keep our families safe at home. We have paratroopers going down in Baghdad who do not have Arabic translators to back them up because Congress 16 years ago didn’t have the guts to do what’s right. You can’t tell me that’s a peripheral fuckin’ issue.”

Murphy tells one last story: “A couple of weeks ago I was in the Helmand province of Afghanistan to get a status report from General McChrystal and Brigadier General Nicholson,” he says. “A hundred and twenty-two degrees, and I’m wearing khaki pants, blue button-down, sleeves rolled up, and I’m dying from the heat, and these soldiers around me are in full combat gear, carrying all of that, in this place where it is an accomplishment just to make it through the day. This is the most dangerous place in the world right now. And one of these guys grabbed me as I was walking by, grabbed my hand and pulled me close for a second, and said so nobody else could hear, ‘Keep fighting to get rid of ‘don’t ask, don’t tell.’

“I said, ‘I will, brother.’

“And he gave me that look like, I’m counting on you.

“And I looked at him like, I got you, man. I got you.”

If the guys I met at Fort Lewis are any indication, plenty more enlisted men, left to their own devices, would cover Murphy’s back in the battle he’s about to lead. The trick is how to get their voices heard.

The New Paper
Print edition: Sunday 27 Sept 2009
Online edition: 28 Sept 2009
Link

‘I’d rather die as an ugly man than a handsome woman’
Female-born transsexuals speak up at first-ever forum that addresses their plight

By Benson Ang

Jack (not his real name) was born more of a Jill.

Only last month did he and three others summon enough courage to tell their story at an open forum.

The forum, the first of its kind, was organised by SgButterfly, a group for transsexuals here.

The speakers were all born women and want or subsequently got a sex change.

According to one study, there are far more men who seek to be women (transwomen) than the other way around (transmen).

Psychiatric study

A 1988 study by psychiatrist Tsoi Wing Foo estimated that there is one transman for every 8,300 Singaporeans and one transwoman for every 2,900 Singaporeans.

The National University Hospital (NUH) has seen 15sex change operations from 2003 to last year.

Jack, 27, was so determined to become a man that he started undergoing male hormone injections. He eventually went for sex reassignment surgery at NUH.

‘I would rather die as an ugly man than as a handsome girl,’ he said.

He said he felt uncomfortable with his female body from an early age. In his adolescence, he was repulsed by the thought of wearing girly clothes and shoes.

He attended a girls’ school and described himself as a ‘typical butch’ – a lesbian with masculine traits.

He had short hair, liked girls and felt uncomfortable around boys. ‘I didn’t know how to behave when I was with them,’ he said.

While studying in a local university, he felt that he could not be a ‘butch’ forever.

He said: ‘I felt that when I started working, I would either have to be more feminine, or more masculine.’

Jack saw a psychiatrist and was diagnosed with gender identity disorder, which he describes as ‘a mental illness that takes a physical cure’.

Another doctor who Jack saw suggested that he drop the sex change idea and try to meet men instead.

It was only after considerable effort that he managed to find a doctor here who supported his decision to change his sex.

The process of telling family and friends was the hardest part of the transition. Many asked why he wanted to be a ‘cannot-make-it-Singapore-guy’.

The first time he told his mother, she replied that everything was in his head and he didn’t have this ‘illness’.

But others, like his brother, who is straight, were more receptive, .

It took two years for Jack’s mother to accept him completely. He said: ‘She now tells people she has two sons.’

At work, he also faced discrimination initially, with colleagues using ‘her’ to refer to him. He now has a girlfriend and is active in the lesbian community.

On his experience, he said: ‘I get to see things from both genders’ (points of view).’

But he hesitates to give advice to others who want to take the same tough route.

Jack said: ‘Undergoing a sex change is a personal decision, so I would want others to think carefully before they actually decide to do so.’

Another forum speaker, Daniel (not his real name), is a 20-something now undergoing hormone replacement therapy.

He wants to go for a sex change operation in six months and change the sex listed on his identity card so that he can marry his girlfriend, which he hopes will happen next year. They have been dating for six months.

IC and marriage

Singapore is one of the few countries in Asia to legalise gender change on identity cards, but it will only do so after genital surgery.

Transsexuals can also get married to a member of the sex opposite to their new gender.

When contacted, Daniel’s girlfriend acknowledged that she and Daniel were in love, but she declined to be interviewed.

He said: ‘One day soon, I hope she can take me home to her parents as their son-in-law.’

Daniel, who grew up in a conservative family, said that body image was a big issue for him throughout his adolescence.

‘There was always this conflict within myself between how my mind feels and how my body looks.’

For Daniel, family is important, which is why he feels especially sad when his sex change harms his relationship with his family.

He said. ‘My mother believes that I’m more of a lesbian than a transsexual. She hopes that I’ll change back one day.’

Daniel’s mother could not be contacted for an interview.

Meanwhile, Daniel is scared of his future in-laws finding out about his past. This is why he did not want to be photographed and be named.

If the couple manage to adopt in the future, he’s not sure how he will tell his children the truth.

‘How am I going to tell them that their dad was female, and was supposed to be a mummy?

‘I can’t imagine how they will take it.’

Woman-to-man sex change surgery more complicated, costlier

WOMEN who have a persistent wish to be male are less common here than men wanting to be women.

Mr Daniel Kaw, 37, the founder of SgButterfly, said when people talk about transsexuals, ‘they immediately think about Changi Village and about Thailand’s transsexual cabaret shows’.

Mr Kaw believes that it is socially easier to be a transman than a transwoman because of the public’s different perceptions of them.

Transwomen are stereotyped as ‘ah kuas’, showgirls and prostitutes, he said, while transmen are socially ‘invisible’ and do not attract as much controversy.

‘Most start off in the lesbian community. They look and act boyishly, so people just treat them as tomboys,’ Mr Kaw said.

But the actual sex change process is more difficult for transmen.

For example, sex change surgery for transwomen is a one-stage procedure.

It involves turning the penis into a vagina.

But for transmen, it is more complicated and has to be completed in stages.

A semblance of a penis has to be constructed using skin and muscle. In the final stages of the procedure, a prosthesis – either a silicon tube or an on/off mechanism – is inserted into the artificial penis.

An NUH spokesman said that a woman-to-man operation costs from $15,000. This is more expensive than a man-to-woman operation, which costs between $8,000 and $9,000.

SgButterfly was set up four years ago. In the first three years, Mr Kaw said he knew only four transmen who participated in its activities. But this year alone, eight new transmen have signed up.

Mr Kaw estimates that there are about 20 transmen and 50 transwomen on SgButterfly’s mailing list.

17  September 2009
Der Spiegel Online
Source

The Gay Sons of Allah
Wave of Homophobia Sweeps the Muslim World

By Juliane von Mittelstaedt and Daniel Steinvorth

In most Islamic countries, gay men and women are ostracized, persecuted and in some cases even murdered. Repressive regimes are often fanning the flames of hatred in a bid to outdo Islamists when it comes to spreading “moral panic.”

Bearded men kidnapped him in the center of Baghdad, threw him into a dark hole, chained him down, urinated on him, and beat him with an iron pipe. But the worst moment for Hisham, 40, came on the fourth day of his ordeal when the kidnappers called his family. He was terrified they would tell his mother that he is gay and that this was the reason they had kidnapped him. If they did he would never be able to see his family again. The shame would be unbearable for them.

“Do what you want to me, but don’t tell them,” he screamed.

Instead of humiliating him in the eyes of his family, the kidnappers demanded a ransom of $50,000 (€33,000), a huge sum for the average Iraqi family. His parents had to go into debt and sell off all of their son’s possessions in order to raise the money required to secure his freedom. Shortly after they received the ransom the kidnappers threw Hisham out of their car somewhere in the northern part of Baghdad. They decided not to shoot him and let him go. But they sent him on his way with a warning: “This is your last chance. If we ever see you again, we’ll kill you.”

That was four months ago. Hisham has since moved to Lebanon. He told his family that he had decided to flee the violence and terror in Baghdad and that he had found work in Beirut. Needless to say he didn’t disclose the fact that he is unable to live in Iraq because of the death squads who are out hunting for “effeminate-looking” men.

In Baghdad a new series of murders began early this year, perpetrated against men suspected of being gay. Often they are raped, their genitals cut off, and their anuses sealed with glue. Their bodies are left at landfills or dumped in the streets. The non-profit organization Human Rights Watch, which has documented many of these crimes, has spoken of a systematic campaign of violence involving hundreds of murders.

Restoring ‘Religious Morals’

A video clip showing men dancing with each other at a party in Baghdad in the summer of 2008 is thought to have triggered this string of kidnappings, rapes, and murders. Thousands of people have seen it on the Internet and on their cell phones. Islamic religious leaders began ranting about the growing presence of a “third sex” which American soldiers were said to have brought in with them. The followers of radical Shiite leader Muqtada al-Sadr, in particular, felt the need to take action aimed at restoring “religious morals.”

In their stronghold, the part of Baghdad known as Sadr City, black-clad militiamen patrol the streets, on the lookout for anyone whose “unmanly appearance” or behavior would make it possible to identify them as being homosexual. Often enough long hair, tight-fitting t-shirts and trousers, or a certain way of walking were a death sentence for the persons in question. But it’s not just the Mahdi army who has been hunting down and killing gay men. Other groups such as Sunni militias close to al-Qaida and the Iraqi security services are also known to be involved.

Homosexuals in Iraq may be faced with an exceptionally dangerous situation but they are ostracized almost everywhere in the Muslim world. Gay rights organizations estimate that more than 100,000 gay men and women are currently being discriminated against and threatened in Muslim countries. Thousands of them commit suicide, end up in prison, or go into hiding.

Egypts Starts to Clamp Down

More than 30 Islamic countries have laws on the books that prohibit homosexuality and make it a criminal offense. In most cases punishment ranges from floggings to life imprisonment. In Mauritania, Bangladesh, Yemen, parts of Nigeria and Sudan, the United Arab Emirates, Saudi Arabia, and Iran convicted homosexuals can also be sentenced to death.

In those Muslim countries where homosexuality is not against the law gay men and women are nonetheless persecuted, arrested, and in some cases murdered. Although long known for its open gay scene, Egypt has recently started to clamp down hard. The lives of homosexuals are monitored by a kind of vice squad who tap telephones and recruit informants. As soon as the police have accumulated the kind of evidence they need they charge their victims with “debauchery.”

In Malaysia homosexuality has been used as a political weapon. In 2000 opposition leader Anwar Ibrahim was sentenced to nine years in prison for allegedly committing “sodomy” with his wife’s chauffeur as well as with a former speechwriter. In 2004 the conviction was overturned on appeal and he was acquitted. In the summer of 2008 charges were filed against him in a similar case when a male aide accused him of sodomy. The case is still ongoing.

For a while Anwar was the favorite of former Prime Minister Mahathir Mohamad and was being groomed to succeed him in that office until they had a falling out in 1998. Ten years and some prison time later, on August 28, 2008, Anwar managed to be sworn in again as a member of the Malaysian parliament. But that’s as far as he has got with his political comeback.

Even in liberal Lebanon homosexuals run the risk of being sentenced to a year in prison. On the other hand, Beirut has the only gay and lesbian organization in the Arab world (Helem, which means ‘dream’ in Arabic). There are posters on the walls of the Helem office in downtown Beirut providing information on AIDS and tips on how to deal with homophobia. The existence of Helem is being tolerated for the time being but the Interior Ministry has yet to grant it an official permit. “And it’s hard to imagine that we ever will be given one,” says Georges Azzi, the organization’s managing director.

Islamists Are the Dominant Cultural Force

In Istanbul there is a free gay scene, a Christopher Street Day, and even religious Muslims are among the fans of transsexual pop diva Bülent Ersoy and the late gay singer Zeki Müren. But outside the world of show business it is considered both a disgrace and an illness to be a götveren or “queen.” In the Turkish army homosexuality is cause for failing a medical test. To identify anyone trying to use homosexuality as an excuse to get out of military service, army doctors ask to see photos or videos showing the recruits engaging in sex with a man. And they have to be in the “passive” role. In Turkey being in the active role is considered manly enough not to be proof of homosexuality.

It looks as if a wave of homophobia has swept over the Islamic world, a place that was once widely known for its openmindedness, where homoerotic literature was written and widely read, where gender roles were not so narrowly defined, and, as in the days of ancient Greece, where men often sought the companionship of youths.

Islamists are now a dominant cultural force in many of these countries. They include figures such as popular Egyptian television preacher Yussuf al-Qaradawi who demonizes gays as perverse. Four years ago Shiite grand ayatollah Ali al-Sistani issued a fatwa saying that gays are to be murdered in the most brutal way possible. These religious opinion leaders base their hatred for gays on the story of Lot in the Koran: “Do ye commit lewdness such as no people in creation (ever) committed before you? For ye practice your lusts on men in preference to women: ye are indeed a people transgressing beyond bounds.” Lot’s people suffered the destruction of the cities of Sodom and Gomorrah for their sins. The Prophet Muhammad has a number of dicta in which he condemns these acts by Lot’s people and in one of them he even goes as far as to call for punishment by death.

European Prudery Exported to the Colonies

The story of Lot and related verses in the Koran were not interpreted as unambiguous references to homosexual sex until the 20th century, says Everett Rowson, professor of Islamic Studies at New York University. This reinterpretation was the result of Western influences — its source was the prudery of European colonialists who introduced their conception of sexual morality to the newly conquered countries.

The fact of the matter is that half of the laws across the world that prohibit homosexuality today are derived from a single law that the British enacted in India in 1860. “Many attitudes with regard to sexual morality that are thought to be identical to Islam owe a lot more to Queen Victoria than to the Koran,” Rowson says.

More than anything, it is the politicization of Islam that has led to the persecution of gays today. Sexual morals are no longer a private matter. They are regulated and instrumentalized by governments.

Part 2: ‘Regimes Want to Control the Private Lives of Citizens’

“The most repressive are secular regimes such as those in Egypt or Morocco which are under pressure from Islamists and so try to outdo them with regard to morals,” says Scott Long of Human Rights Watch. “In addition the persecution of homosexuals shows that a regime has control over the private lives of its citizens — a sign of power and authority.” For several years now a sense of “moral panic” has been systematically fomented in many Muslim countries.

Iran is a case in point, where homosexuals have been persecuted on a more or less regular basis since the Islamic revolution. Since President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad has been in office there has definitely been an increase in this persecution despite the fact that Ahmadinejad never grows tired of emphasizing that there are no homosexuals in his country.

The mere suspicion that someone may have committed “unnatural acts” is enough for that person to be sentenced to a flogging in Iran. If caught more than once, the person in question can be sentenced to death. According to official statistics, 148 homosexuals have been given a death sentence and executed thus far. The true figure is doubtless much larger than this. The last case of this kind to attract public attention was that of 21-year-old Makwan Moludsade, who was hanged in December 2007. He was accused of having raped three boys several years earlier. Homosexuals are almost always charged with other crimes such as rape, fraud, or robbery in order to be better able to justify their execution.

‘If I Had Stayed, They Would Have Killed Me’

As a result of this situation thousands of gays and lesbians have fled Iran. For most of them the first port of call is Turkey. “I had no choice but to flee,” says Ali, a 32-year-old physician. “If I had stayed, they would have killed me.”

Ali was careful. He rarely went to parties, he used different Internet cafés for online chat sessions, and he didn’t let anyone in on his secret, not even the members of his family knew. Everything went well until one day his friend’s father caught them kissing. Two days later Ali lost his job at the hospital and then he was hit by a car, in what seemed to be a deliberate attack. Shortly after that he received a telephone call telling him: “We want to see you hang.”

What he hadn’t known was that his friend’s father was a high-ranking member of the Iranian Revolutionary Guards.

Ali went to the bank, withdrew his savings, and took a train to Turkey, where he applied for asylum. Since then he has lived in a tiny apartment in Kayseri, Central Anatolia, one of 35 gay Iranian exiles in that city.

Arsham Parsi, 29, from Shiraz, fled Iran four years ago. A slight man with a fluffy beard and glasses, he was one of the most wanted men in Iran for several years after creating the country’s first gay network in 2001. Its members only communicated with each other by e-mail and very few people knew his real name. But in the end his identity was still revealed. Parsi managed to get away but it was a close call. He got a visa for Canada, where he founded the “Iranian Queer Organization”, which now has 6,000 members in Iran. They include numerous transsexuals or persons who consider themselves to be transsexuals. Parsi estimates that “Nearly half of all sex-change operations are requested by homosexuals.”

Sex-Change Operations Booming in Iran

The persecution of gays has led to a boom in demand for sex-change operations in Iran. More operations of this kind are carried out in the Islamic Republic than anywhere else in the world apart from Thailand. These procedures were approved by Ayatollah Khomeini himself in 1983. Khomeini defined transsexuality as a disease that can be healed by means of an operation. Since then thousands of people have requested this kind of treatment and the Iranian government even covers part of the costs.

“Family members and physicians urge homosexuals to have operations to normalize their sexual orientation,” Parsi says. This way it was possible for a high-ranking Shiite religious scholar to finance his secretary’s physical transformation into a woman and then to marry him.

The archconservative Kingdom of Saudi Arabia is the only Arab country where sharia law is the sole legal code, under which homosexuals are flogged and executed. “homosexuals are freer here than they are in Iran,” says Afdhere Jama, who traveled through the Islamic world for seven years doing research for his book “Illegal Citizens.”

Gay men and women have a surprising amount of space in Saudi society. Newspapers print stories about lesbian sex in school lavatories, while it is an open secret that certain shopping centers, restaurants, and bars in Jeddah and Riyadh are gay meeting points.

“There are numerous Saudi men who have sexual relationships with youths before they are married or when their wives are pregnant,” Jama says. In these cases having sex with another male is often the only way of having sex at all. Extramarital affairs with women are nearly impossible. “In the West the men in question would be considered gay, but in countries like Saudi Arabia it is harder to categorize them,” Jama notes. Most Muslims have trouble understanding the Western concept of “gay identity.” In their countries there is no such thing as a gay lifestyle or a gay movement.

Cultural and Political Factors

Daayiee Abdullah, 55, is an imam. He wears a prayer cap, has a beard — and is gay. He is one of only two imams in the world who are openly gay. He voluntarily chose to follow the path of Islam. Raised as a Baptist in Detroit, he made friends with Chinese Muslims while studying in Beijing and then converted to Islam. “They told me it would be no problem for me as a gay man to be a good Muslim.”

Imam Abdullah and many others along with him have a somewhat different interpretation of the story of Lot. According to them, those whom God condemned were not homosexuals but rapists and robbers. It is not homosexuality that the Koran prohibits but rather rape. “The rejection of gays is a result of cultural and political factors,” he says. “Just like honor killings and arranged marriages. They’re not in the Koran either.”

Abdullah lives in the US capital, Washington D.C., and says prayers at the funerals of gay persons, particularly if they died of AIDS, something no other imam is willing to do. He officiates at same-sex marriages and, for the past 11 years, has provided religious advice in an on-line forum entitled “Muslim Gay Men.”

He regularly receives death threats but now laughs them off, saying: “How can two loving men pose a threat to the foundations God has laid?”

Source

Thursday 10 September 2009

The Prime Minister has released a statement on the Second World War code-breaker, Alan Turing, recognising the “appalling” way he was treated for being gay.

Alan Turing, a mathematician most famous for his work on breaking the German Enigma codes, was convicted of ‘gross indecency’ in 1952 and sentenced to chemical castration.

Gordon Brown’s statement came in response to a petition posted on the Number 10 website which has received thousands of signatures in recent months.

Read the statement

2009 has been a year of deep reflection – a chance for Britain, as a nation, to commemorate the profound debts we owe to those who came before. A unique combination of anniversaries and events have stirred in us that sense of pride and gratitude which characterise the British experience. Earlier this year I stood with Presidents Sarkozy and Obama to honour the service and the sacrifice of the heroes who stormed the beaches of Normandy 65 years ago. And just last week, we marked the 70 years which have passed since the British government declared its willingness to take up arms against Fascism and declared the outbreak of World War Two. So I am both pleased and proud that, thanks to a coalition of computer scientists, historians and LGBT activists, we have this year a chance to mark and celebrate another contribution to Britain’s fight against the darkness of dictatorship; that of code-breaker Alan Turing.

Turing was a quite brilliant mathematician, most famous for his work on breaking the German Enigma codes. It is no exaggeration to say that, without his outstanding contribution, the history of World War Two could well have been very different. He truly was one of those individuals we can point to whose unique contribution helped to turn the tide of war. The debt of gratitude he is owed makes it all the more horrifying, therefore, that he was treated so inhumanely. In 1952, he was convicted of ‘gross indecency’ – in effect, tried for being gay. His sentence – and he was faced with the miserable choice of this or prison – was chemical castration by a series of injections of female hormones. He took his own life just two years later.

Thousands of people have come together to demand justice for Alan Turing and recognition of the appalling way he was treated. While Turing was dealt with under the law of the time and we can’t put the clock back, his treatment was of course utterly unfair and I am pleased to have the chance to say how deeply sorry I and we all are for what happened to him. Alan and the many thousands of other gay men who were convicted as he was convicted under homophobic laws were treated terribly. Over the years millions more lived in fear of conviction.

I am proud that those days are gone and that in the last 12 years this government has done so much to make life fairer and more equal for our LGBT community. This recognition of Alan’s status as one of Britain’s most famous victims of homophobia is another step towards equality and long overdue.

But even more than that, Alan deserves recognition for his contribution to humankind. For those of us born after 1945, into a Europe which is united, democratic and at peace, it is hard to imagine that our continent was once the theatre of mankind’s darkest hour. It is difficult to believe that in living memory, people could become so consumed by hate – by anti-Semitism, by homophobia, by xenophobia and other murderous prejudices – that the gas chambers and crematoria became a piece of the European landscape as surely as the galleries and universities and concert halls which had marked out the European civilisation for hundreds of years. It is thanks to men and women who were totally committed to fighting fascism, people like Alan Turing, that the horrors of the Holocaust and of total war are part of Europe’s history and not Europe’s present.

So on behalf of the British government, and all those who live freely thanks to Alan’s work I am very proud to say: we’re sorry, you deserved so much better.

Gordon Brown

The Jakarta Post
13 August 2009

New book sheds light on gay groups in Indonesia

Ni Komang Erviani , The Jakarta Post, Denpasar

Society still strongly refuses to accept the lifestyle choices of gay men in Indonesia, causing many to lead double lives, a US scholar says.

Tom Boesllstorf, a professor of anthropology at the University of California, launched his book Monday titled The Gay Archipelago at the Queer (Q) film festival in Denpasar. Though the book has been in circulation in English since 2005, the recently reprinted version is in Indonesian.

The professor meticulously studied the origins and history of gay communities in Indonesia, and details the lives of several individuals struggling against social prejudices.

“Many gay men in Indonesia marry a woman they do not love just to meet the pressing demands of society,” he said.

It is very difficult for many homosexual men to reveal their true sexual orientation in Indonesia, he said, because they know their choice may not be accepted by their conservative families, friends, workplaces and the community in general.

“Often they [homosexuals] marry women as proof to their parents and families that they are `normal’ and straight. But within a few years, they come to realize they cannot keep up the false marriages and end up geting a divorce,” he said.

“I came across a gay man living in Sumatra who was married and divorced on the same day,” he said. Sumatra is one of Indonesia’s most devoutly Islamic and conservative areas.

Boesllstorf said he did not believe marrying women simply for the sake of social acceptance and security was the right way for a gay man to counteract any feelings about possible discrimination.

“Women should not be misled in this way. One must be honest and brave enough to reveal who they really are, and not marry without genuine love. That is unacceptable and deceiving,” he said.

The professor said a large number of gay men often left smaller rural areas for larger cities, where the “gay community live within their own circles”.

The book was based on research and study of gay communities in a number of cities including Makassar, Jakarta, Denpasar, and Yogyakarta.

Dede Oetomo, founder of Gaya Nusantara, the first organization which openly provided a forum for gay men in Indonesia, said he agreed with the content of the book.

“We are facing a strong wall of tradition when trying to open up about our real identities,” said Oetomo, a lecturer.

For gay communities in Aceh, Indonesia’s western-most province which strongly enforces Islamic syariah law, homosexual encounters can result in extreme punishments, he said.

“The punishment is very extreme [100 lashes with the rattan cane] and fines are around 2 kilograms in gold. Most people still link homosexuality with dangerous diseases, and believe it can be cured with a `normal’ marriage,” he said.

Sardjono Sigit, a gay activist, said he knew he was gay from a young age and at first tried to deny the truth. On his 30th birthday he told his siblings he was gay, but not his parents.

“I do not think they are ready yet,” Sigit said.

Despite being comfortable personally with his homosexuality, Sigit said he was still not entirely happy living in a heterosexual society that demands certain customs.

“There is still always questions about when I am going to get married, and they make me quite nervous,” said Sigit, who left his job at a construction company to join the gay organization.

Source

August 5, 2009

TORONTO—The American Psychological Association adopted a resolution Wednesday stating that mental health professionals should avoid telling clients that they can change their sexual orientation through therapy or other treatments.

The “Resolution on Appropriate Affirmative Responses to Sexual Orientation Distress and Change Efforts” also advises that parents, guardians, young people and their families avoid sexual orientation treatments that portray homosexuality as a mental illness or developmental disorder and instead seek psychotherapy, social support and educational services “that provide accurate information on sexual orientation and sexuality, increase family and school support and reduce rejection of sexual minority youth.”

The approval, by APA’s governing Council of Representatives, came at APA’s annual convention, during which a task force presented a report that in part examined the efficacy of so-called “reparative therapy,” or sexual orientation change efforts (SOCE).

“Contrary to claims of sexual orientation change advocates and practitioners, there is insufficient evidence to support the use of psychological interventions to change sexual orientation,” said Judith M. Glassgold, PsyD, chair of the task force. “Scientifically rigorous older studies in this area found that sexual orientation was unlikely to change due to efforts designed for this purpose. Contrary to the claims of SOCE practitioners and advocates, recent research studies do not provide evidence of sexual orientation change as the research methods are inadequate to determine the effectiveness of these interventions.” Glassgold added: “At most, certain studies suggested that some individuals learned how to ignore or not act on their homosexual attractions. Yet, these studies did not indicate for whom this was possible, how long it lasted or its long-term mental health effects. Also, this result was much less likely to be true for people who started out only attracted to people of the same sex.”

Based on this review, the task force recommended that mental health professionals avoid misrepresenting the efficacy of sexual orientation change efforts when providing assistance to people distressed about their own or others’ sexual orientation.

APA appointed the six-member Task Force on Appropriate Therapeutic Responses to Sexual Orientation in 2007 to review and update APA’s 1997 resolution, “Appropriate Therapeutic Responses to Sexual Orientation,” and to generate a report. APA was concerned about ongoing efforts to promote the notion that sexual orientation can be changed through psychotherapy or approaches that mischaracterize homosexuality as a mental disorder.

The task force examined the peer-reviewed journal articles in English from 1960 to 2007, which included 83 studies. Most of the studies were conducted before 1978, and only a few had been conducted in the last 10 years. The group also reviewed the recent literature on the psychology of sexual orientation.

“Unfortunately, much of the research in the area of sexual orientation change contains serious design flaws,” Glassgold said. “Few studies could be considered methodologically sound and none systematically evaluated potential harms.”

As to the issue of possible harm, the task force was unable to reach any conclusion regarding the efficacy or safety of any of the recent studies of SOCE: “There are no methodologically sound studies of recent SOCE that would enable the task force to make a definitive statement about whether or not recent SOCE is safe or harmful and for whom,” according to the report.

“Without such information, psychologists cannot predict the impact of these treatments and need to be very cautious, given that some qualitative research suggests the potential for harm,” Glassgold said. “Practitioners can assist clients through therapies that do not attempt to change sexual orientation, but rather involve acceptance, support and identity exploration and development without imposing a specific identity outcome.”

As part of its report, the task force identified that some clients seeking to change their sexual orientation may be in distress because of a conflict between their sexual orientation and religious beliefs. The task force recommended that licensed mental health care providers treating such clients help them “explore possible life paths that address the reality of their sexual orientation, reduce the stigma associated with homosexuality, respect the client’s religious beliefs, and consider possibilities for a religiously and spiritually meaningful and rewarding life.”

“In other words,” Glassgold said, “we recommend that psychologists be completely honest about the likelihood of sexual orientation change, and that they help clients explore their assumptions and goals with respect to both religion and sexuality.”

A copy of the task force report may be obtained from APA’s Public Affairs Office or at http://www.apa.org/pi/lgbc/publications/therapeutic-response.pdf.

Members of the APA Task Force on Appropriate Therapeutic Responses to Sexual Orientation:

Judith M. Glassgold, PsyD, Rutgers University – Chair
Lee Beckstead, PhD
Jack Drescher, MD
Beverly Greene, PhD, St. John’s University
Robin Lin Miller, PhD, Michigan State University
Roger L. Worthington, PhD, University of Missouri

The American Psychological Association, in Washington, D.C., is the largest scientific and professional organization representing psychology in the United States and is the world’s largest association of psychologists. APA’s membership includes more than 150,000 researchers, educators, clinicians, consultants and students. Through its divisions in 54 subfields of psychology and affiliations with 60 state, territorial and Canadian provincial associations, APA works to advance psychology as a science, as a profession and as a means of promoting health, education and human welfare.

Source

22 Jul 2009

by C. S. Zhou

A memorial service will be held this Friday, Jul 24, to celebrate the life of Anthony Yeo, and to honour his contributions and support of the GLBTQ community. C. S. Zhou of the Free Community Church recalls his first meeting with the counsellor at a symposium to address homosexuality and the church a decade ago.

Widely regarded as Singapore’s “Father of Counselling”, Anthony Yeo, 60, passed away on Jun 20 from complications as a result of his leukaemia, leaving behind his brother, wife and two children. He was the founder and clinical director of Counselling and Care Centre. He had numerous letters published in the press on social issues including calling for more understanding and acceptance of lesbians and gays in society. The following tribute is contributed by C. S. Zhou of the Free Community Church.

It was a humid afternoon that Oct 17 when I stepped into the large Methodist church. There seemed to be many middle aged to older people present, all looking very heterosexually married in contrast to the younger ones many of whom looked obviously gay to me – I am not sure if it was my nascent gaydar or a mark of my desperate longing to connect with other gay people that impacted my perceptions of the crowd that afternoon.

I had got wind that a symposium titled Homosexuality and the Church was being organised by Trinity Theological College. The date was five days after Matthew Shepard, a young gay man died. Shepard had been offered a ride by two strangers who lured him by masquerading as gay men on the night of Oct 7, 1998. They then robbed, pistol whipped and tortured him before stringing him up on a fence in a remote area. He was discovered eighteen hours later and died soon after.

The tragic events of Shepard’s death occupied my mind as the panelist – almost all Chinese and all heterosexual males – came up to the stage. One after another they shared their perspectives. All the speakers spoke of gay women and men as sinners or subjects in short, we were all just objects to each one of them, except for one speaker – Anthony Yeo.

Anthony approached his talk on the basis of not knowing. He did not give any answers and did not take any stands. But with a reflective voice that refused to put the subject into a neat box, he asked question after question. He wanted the audience to think, to explore, to wonder – to go beyond simplistic categories, to transcend naïve one-dimensional perspectives that were ultimately destructive of the gay women and men he knew would be present there that day.

His talk must have left the mainly fundamentalist Christians present there that day frustrated at worst or dismissive at best. But for me, sitting there listening intently, Anthony spoke to my heart and reminded me that life is not simple. That it refuses to be arranged into neat stacks of psychological, sociological and theological lego blocks. That its colours are not always primary and its boundaries rarely if ever, clearly delineated.

Watching a man who was considered one of Singapore’s pre-eminent psychotherapists speak in almost pained terms of his unwillingness to assume he understood gay people or had the right to pontificate about them and the issues at stake comforted me even as I struggled to accept my own sexuality after decades of false self denial. I do not exaggerate when I say that that afternoon Anthony helped me re-connect with myself and get in touch with my own humanity. And as the cheekiness of Providence would have it, it was in that church that afternoon, where a one sided view of gay people was presented with no attempt to hear a gay voice except through what Anthony shared that I met an earnest quiet and determined gentleman who would eventually become my better half.

I subsequently got to know Anthony after the then Prime Minister, Goh Chok Tong came out to say that gay people are “like you and me” in Time magazine in 2003. Mr Goh’s openness drew a lot of flak from fundamentalist segments of the Christian church and this triggered Anthony together with Reverend Yap Kim Hao to independently come out in the press to speak up for the need to treat gay people with dignity and non-discrimination.

By then I had moved from my years of self rejection, completed my Masters in Counseling Psychology and was actively involved in setting up support groups for gay people. I made it point to contact Anthony and requested him to help mentor the emerging facilitators from the gay groups and also to speak at some of their gatherings. He accepted without batting an eyelid.

I have, in the years that followed, requested more than a few straight people to speak to or be involved with the gay community. In almost every case, the people I approached have asked many questions – often afraid that somehow their public profile could be maligned and distorted by the fundamentalist Christian lobby who would seek to defame them as they did to Constance Singam of AWARE recently.

But Anthony was different. He just said yes and joined in the fray with such measured and steady enthusiasm. I don’t think I have seen someone engage so wholeheartedly and yet with so much peace and calm. And I will always be amazed at how trusting he was of us even though he hardly knew us. Anthony was of course not naïve and those who know him know he always had a healthy skepticism. But he never let that block him from standing on the side of the marginalised. And we made it a point, to ensure that those of us who worked with him would not to abuse that trust which he had so graciously given.

It is Anthony’s willingness to plunge into something with a sense of unknowingness and yet trusting that things will somehow take care of themselves while we take one step at a time, is perhaps his most singular strength and quality worthy of emulation. I recall an occasion when Anthony had agreed to speak at a workshop organised by Oogachaga for counselors, with another therapist, Juliana Toh. I still vividly remember Juliana being a somewhat flustered and worried on the morning of the workshop as we did not seem to have a good enough game plan as we sat at the Yakun coffee shop while I berated myself for not preparing the ground better for them. Anthony picking up on our anxieties, said with his never say die attitude, “Let’s just see how things unfold. We don’t need to plan too much.” I thought he was a little mad or at best reckless and I don’t think Juliana was too convinced either but as the day’s proceedings unfolded, it was obvious that it unfolded well. This is one of the things I will miss much about Anthony – someone to help me jump into the deep end with a blusterless yet gung ho can do spirit.

While I believe that gay people have to stand up for their own right to live lives of dignity and wholeness if we are to ever be treated as equal human beings, the reality is that our straight friends bring another dimension to the issue of gay equality. And we in Singapore have been fortunate to have many straight people support our quest to just be allowed to be us.

But it is also a reality that it is easy to support while quietly hidden away from the public glare. It is easy to tell your gay friends and family that, “It is ok for you to be gay but don’t expect me to say it publicly. Don’t expect me to speak up for you because I don’t want to cause or experience any turbulence in my own life.” While the increasing silent support gay people get is important and precious, it is nevertheless insufficient.

The number of straight Singaporeans who are willing to stand up in the open to and echo the words of PM Lee that gay people “include people who are responsible, invaluable, highly respected contributing members of society. And (that)…among them are some of our friends, our relatives, our colleagues, our brothers and sisters, or some of our children… (that) they too must have a place in this society and they too are entitled to their private lives,” are too few and far in between.

And this is often because the people who do have the temerity and gumption to come forward to speak this truth in the open have had to endure the relentless reputational lynchings launched by fundamentalist mobs who play on the guttural fears of other well meaning Singaporeans. It is for this reason that the gay community needs to realise our deep indebtedness to people like Rev Yap Kim Hao, Siew Kum Hong and Anthony Yeo.

We only see their names in the papers and the letters they write and are somewhat distanced from the drama of their lives. Sometimes we get to see a bit closer and watch the smearing and tarring that gets spread virally in the virtual world of the web but we rarely understand the personal cost and trauma they bear from the malice and vitriol they face. And all this for something that is not even essentially theirs – they are straight after all.

It was in the Singapore General Hospital when I went to visit Anthony on the day he passed on that the personal cost he experienced entered into my world. His wife Soo Lan, whom I had not met before, came up to me, held my hands and broke down. Through her heart rending weeping she said she wanted my friends and I to know how much Anthony loved gay people and how he often spoke about his work with the gay community fondly to her.

Throughout that eternity of a moment as she held on to my hands, I kept hearing two words again and again – “love” and “bashed.” Yes, “bashed” – as Anthony loved again and again, he was bashed again and again and tragically often by the very people he had considered friends. And yet Anthony never stopped loving and he just kept on speaking forth. My cheery friend Bryan Choong who was with me then seemed to have all his energy sapped away and just sat down and wept while I – the motor mouth who can usually ad lib non-stop stood there bereft of any speech, overwhelmed by the enormity of that moment when it finally hit home that the honor the gay community has from having people like Anthony stand up for us came at the cost of him being bashed, smashed, smeared and ripped apart again and again just simply because he believed in people like you and me and dared to stand up for us.

While many of us in the community may have never heard of Anthony, the reality is that he is one of those rare individuals who helped make life a little easier for you and me.

Every now and again Han, my partner, still reminds me playfully of the time we first met that October afternoon. Supposedly, I was clutching on to my black worn out haversack for dear life as if it was some Linus-ian security blanket in which I kept deeply hidden, the gay me who was too afraid to come out. Well I don’t clutch any bags anymore – not unless they are Prada. And I have Anthony to thank for that.

The late Anthony Yeo’s letters to the press on gay issues: 

Keep an open mind and respect differing views (The Straits Times, Jul 18, 2003)

Mr George Lim Heng Chye’s comment on hiring of gays raises some issues that warrant further dialogue.

While one would not dispute the need to uphold moral values, to regard the hiring of gays on the part of the Government as a signal of possible moral decadence is being rather simplistic.

The assertion that the gay lifestyle will erode moral values and expose the next generation to corrupting influences seems to suggest that the world we live in, that is predominantly heterosexual in orientation, is a perfect world, vulnerable to deadly influence if we permit the gay lifestyle to prevail.

If we were to survey the kind of problems we experience daily, we would be familiar with physically and sexually abused children, females being raped and molested, people growing up emotionally and mentally disturbed, as well as a variety of deviant behaviours.

Those in the mental-health profession would easily testify that the large majority of them come from homes where parents are heterosexual in orientation.

Mr Lim also seemed rather certain as to how homosexuals become the way they are. Views have always been divided on this issue.

However, there has been an increasing dominant observation that homosexuals do not necessarily come from a sexually abused background, homes without father figures, or being nurtured by dominant mothers, nor were they addicted to pornography. It has also been observed that many who had been sexually abused as children do not end up being homosexuals.

It is still rather unclear as to whether children raised by same-sex parents are necessarily more disturbed than children with heterosexual parents. There is evidence from longitudinal studies that children with same-sex parents may not necessarily exhibit psychological disturbances.

We cannot contend that should homosexuals ever be in key positions in government, there will be a definite corrupting influence filtering through society.

One needs merely to observe those countries that have permitted homosexual marriages to acknowledge that those countries are not falling apart.

Perhaps it might be wiser to adopt an open mind for dialogue and be respectful of differing views.

Anthony Yeo

Let’s debate without prejudice, judgment or condemnation (The Straits Times, Jul 13, 2007)

Mr Janadas Devan made a very bold attempt in exploring the issues pertaining to same-sex parents forming a family, ‘Can mum, mum and kids make a family?’ (ST, July 7).

His article serves a useful challenge to the majority view that homosexuals, if permitted to carry on their lifestyle, and/or become parents, will only bring disorder and disaster to family and society.

Of particular challenge are the questions: ‘Are the children of divorced heterosexual couples better off than the children of my lesbian friends?’ and ‘How about the children of single mothers or of constantly bickering heterosexual couples locked in loveless marriages?’

I believe there is a need for further consideration and discussion regarding these questions.

In my 35 years of professional practice of psychological counselling and work with families, this is what I have observed.

Of all the thousands of people who sought counselling for psychological disturbance, relationship problems and effects of stress of life, I observed that all of them had parents from heterosexual marriages.

Those children who have suffered from physical, emotional/psychological and sexual abuse did not have parents from same sex relationship.

In fact, practically every case of sexual abuse involved a parent, usually the father or step-father, uncle, brother and someone known to the family. They were mostly heterosexual encounters.

Of all those who sought counselling with marital problems involving one spouse having extra-marital affairs, practically all of them involved the spouse having a heterosexual relationship.

I have had experiences with men afflicted with sexual addiction, such as pornography and those who engage in paid sex. Most of these men were married heterosexuals.

As I ponder over Janadas’ questions, I am also wondering about the tendency to ascribe social and family problems to the threat of a homosexual lifestyle and relationship.

It is so easy to make proclamations that if homosexuals were to be accepted and homosexual acts decriminalised, then society and family life will inevitably deteriorate.

My observations, experiences coupled with research done do not bear this out in any way.

In fact, if my 35 years of professional experience were to be credited with any validity, I am more inclined to ask the following questions:

1. Is there an ideal form of family life?

2. Are parents from heterosexual marriages any safer for children?

3. Could it be possible that such parents are more likely to cause harm to children, leading to long-term psychological problems?

4. What evidence do we have that children of same-sex parents might not be better adjusted people?

5. How do we reckon with the fact that almost all known homosexuals have parents from heterosexual marriages?

In sharing my observations and questions, my intention is to appeal for a reasoned dialogue over this matter without prejudice, judgment or condemnation.

It serves no purpose to persecute any human being, most of all people with different sexual orientation from the majority in society.

Homosexuals are human beings deserving of dignity, respect and acceptance even if we have difficulties understanding them and/or accepting their sexual orientation and lifestyles.

It has been a couple of weeks since the Thio-NYU incident and I think I’ve finally figured out why it has been bothering me so much. It’s not as if homophobia and other forms of intolerance don’t already irk me enough, but for some reason, just something about Dr Thio Li-ann’s cool response to the reactions of the law school’s LBGT organization to her anti gay stance, including an open letter from NYU student Jim McCurley (reproduced here), gave me a fortnight-long sense of unease.

It wasn’t the fact that Dr Thio’s response seemed so calm and almost reasonable, so unlike her crass and tactless description of anal sex as “shoving a straw up your nose to drink” while arguing against the decriminalization of gay sex in Singapore. I did not assume for one second that she would present herself as anything less than professional in her capacity as a Professor, and especially to a more liberal audience such as NYU. It wasn’t even the irony that her course is about “Human Rights in Asia”, a topic that many have questioned about whether she is qualified to teach, given her failure to recognize the rights of homosexuals.

Continue reading…

6 July 2009
Straits Times

Homosexual acts: No change in actual Indian law 

By Sue-Ann Chia 

EVEN though the Delhi High Court has ruled that an Indian law outlawing homosexual acts is unconstitutional, the actual law itself has not changed, Law Minister K. Shanmugam pointed out yesterday.

‘It is a court-interpreted decision. It wasn’t a change of the law by the government,’ he explained at a dialogue with Punggol Central residents.

He was responding to a question from grassroots leader Khartini Khalid on whether a similar Singapore law – Section 377A of the Penal Code – would be repealed following India’s move.

‘Whether our courts will take a similar interpretation, I don’t know. It is not our position to tell the courts what to do,’ he said.

Noting that the Singapore Government’s position on homosexuality had been made clear by Prime Minister Lee Hsien Loong during the parliamentary debate on this issue in 2007, he said: ‘We won’t change the law, but how that is interpreted is up to the courts.’

Singapore has not repealed this law despite appeals from some quarters to do so, as the Government ‘cannot move ahead of public opinion’, he said.

This is because while the Government has to ’set the standard and take the lead’ in many other areas, there remain areas where it has to ‘be careful of being ahead of public opinion’, he explained.

Sexuality and personal issues are some areas where the Government prefers to defer to public opinion.

He said while there are groups lobbying for homosexuality to be decriminalised, there are also many Singaporeans who say the practice is ‘totally not acceptable’.

‘The Government has to respect both sides,’ he said.

He conceded that the current situation – in which the law against homosexuality is in place but is not strictly enforced – ‘is a little bit messy’.

‘We have to accept a bit of messiness. The way society is going, we don’t think it will be fair to prosecute people who say that they are homosexuals.

‘But at this time, our society is not ready for us to say we will pass legislations which say homosexuality is no longer an offence,’ he said.

Source

By Hoe Yeen Nie, Channel NewsAsia

Posted: 05 July 2009 2015 hrs

SINGAPORE: Law Minister K Shanmugam has said Singapore will not decriminalise gay sex but the courts have the power to decide how the law, Section 377, is applied. Section 377A of the Penal Code deems sex between men a crime.

A recent ruling by the New Delhi High Court legalising gay sex between consenting adults in India raised questions on whether Singapore might go the same way. Both countries share the same Penal Code, inherited from the colonial British.

In a dialogue with Punggol residents on Sunday, Mr Shanmugam said Section 377 will remain as homosexuality is still not accepted by most Singaporeans.

He said: “We have the law. We say it won’t be enforced. Is it totally clear? We, sometimes in these things, have to accept a bit of messiness. And the way the society is going, we don’t think it’s fair for us to prosecute people who say that they are homosexual.”

But he said that while the government will not take the lead in repealing the law, the legal courts in Singapore have the power to decide how Section 377 is interpreted and applied.

Mr Shanmugam, who is also the Second Minister for Home Affairs, said the government will play a more active role in other areas, such as creating ways for new citizens and Permanent Residents to interact with the community.

But he said all parties must also make an effort. “It’s not a quick process. You can’t wave a magic wand and say, ‘oh, integration takes place’. It takes many years. And why talk about foreigners? Even amongst ourselves, different races, religions – how long has it taken to get to this stage?”

During the hour-long dialogue, one resident noted that the minister had spoken of affirmative action for Malays five years ago and asked if he felt this was still necessary.

In reply, Mr Shanmugam said the community had come a long way, but clarified that he was not calling for a quota system at the time.

Instead, success must be founded on meritocracy.

Mr Shanmugam said: “We don’t talk about quotas, that’s not our approach. We don’t talk about…so many places for Malays, so many places for Indians, so many places for Chinese. That’s a wrong way to go. It has got to be meritocratic. But assuming 10 people make the cut-off, try and look for some who are also from the Malay community.”