In Singapore, it’s time to change closed minds towards the LGBT community
Chirag Agarwal believes more in the LGBT community should come out, as times change, to show fellow Singaporeans that they share the same fears, dreams and aspirations
Growing up in a conservative country and a religious family, I did not consider equality regardless of sexual orientation as a fundamental human right. In fact, even up until the time I left Singapore as a working adult, I did not have a single friend who I knew to be homosexual. It was easy to be apathetic about something that I only understood to exist in theory.
Things changed when I moved to Melbourne and made my first openly gay friend. At the same time, a robust intellectual debate on marriage equality was playing out in the media.
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Around that time, a close friend from Singapore revealed that she was in a same-sex relationship. Having learned of my friends’ sexual orientation after I became good friends with them made me wonder: would our friendship be any different if I knew they were gay or lesbian before I met them? The answer seemed obvious: their sexuality made no difference and, honestly, it was none of my business.
In some cases in Iran, gay and lesbian people undergo sex-change surgery to stay alive
Over the many meals I shared with my gay college mate in Australia, I learned of his struggles growing up as a gay boy in a small town in Australia. He found himself attracted to other boys but couldn’t tell anyone because everyone he knew spoke disparagingly about homosexuality and labelled it a mental condition. He went through an existential crisis at a young age. His story left me dumbfounded.
A form of my friend’s worst nightmare is sometimes played out in countries like Iran where homosexuality is a crime punishable by death but sex change operations are encouraged, even subsidised by the government. So, in some cases in Iran, gay and lesbian people undergo sex-change surgery to stay alive.
Asian societies have not always discriminated against homosexuals. Louis Crompton details in his book, Homosexuality and Civilization, the homosexual traditions of major societies from the Greeks and Romans to China and Japan. He shares famous stories of male love from Chinese history, noting that: “In the West, opposition to homosexuality has most often come from religion. In China, religious attitudes towards sexuality in general and homosexuality in particular have been markedly different”.
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