Singapore to Host Asia’s Biggest Gay Festival, August 7-9
Advocate,
August 7, 2004
This weekend the conservative city-state of Singapore
will play host to what is being promoted as Asia’s biggest gay and lesbian
festival, according to a report by Agence France-Presse. A record 8,000
revelers are estimated to attend the fourth annual party in what is expected
to be a lively boost to Singapore’s emerging reputation as one of Asia’s
premier gay tourism and entertainment hubs. Stuart Koe, the chief executive of
regional gay Web site Fridae.com, which is organizing the event, said the
three-day festival beginning Saturday, August 7, was projected to generate
$5.8 million in tourism revenue. “We have large numbers of people coming
from Hong Kong, Japan, Taiwan, and the United States,” Koe told AFP, adding
that the numbers of partygoers had grown from 1,500 in the event’s first
year in 2001. “There’s nothing else like this in Asia. It’s really the
only event on this scale.”
The festival is expected to increase tensions between
Singapore and Thailand over which country can lay claim to the title of
Asia’s gay tourism capital after a Bangkok-based lobby group was formed last
week to win back the pink dollar from the city-state, AFP reports. However,
Koe stressed the event, which coincides with Singapore’s National Day
celebrations on Monday and boasts some of the region’s best DJs at its beach
and nightclub parties, is not targeted solely at the gay and lesbian
community. “This is an event that welcomes gays, lesbians, bisexuals,
heterosexuals. It’s an event that does not discriminate against anybody,”
he said. “We are trying to create an event that puts prejudices aside and
really empowers people to be who they are.”
But many gay activists question whether the Singapore
government is cynically chasing gay tourism dollars rather than genuinely
trying to encourage a more tolerant and open society. Indeed, gay sex is still
outlawed in the nation, and authorities are maintaining a ban on gay groups
registering as societies. “All [the government leaders] are interested in is
the entertainment dollar, not rights and freedoms and liberalization of the
mind,” local gay rights activist Alex Au told AFP. Au’s People Like Us
group, which represents Singapore’s gay and lesbian community, has been
trying to become registered as a society since 1996, with its most recent
effort failing in March this year.
The government restrictions reflect a self-confessed
double standard on the part of the nation’s leaders toward gays. Singapore
prime minister Goh Chok Tong said in July last year that gays would be allowed
to work in civil service, while a first-ever help center catering specifically
to gays opened a few months later offering phone counseling services and
medical and legal advice. The city-state has also seen many gay-friendly
clubs, karaoke pubs, saunas, restaurants, and fashion outlets open in recent
years. Yet Goh insisted last year that gay sex acts would not be
decriminalized because of opposition from Singapore’s conservative majority
Chinese population as well as the Muslim community. “The heartlanders are
still conservative. You can call it double standard, but sometimes it is
double standard. They are conservative,” he said. “And for the Muslims,
it’s religion, it’s not the law. Islam openly says the religion is against
gay practice.”
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