Singapore's Cultural Experimentation: Gay Rights, Stem Cells, Casinos and the Evangelical Response

Abstract

Since the early 1990s the Singapore government has been taking a more liberal stance on controversial issues such as gay rights, embryonic stem cell research and the gaming industry. My paper analyses the Singapore state's utilitarian justification and its authoritarian enactment of these liberal policies. The first part looks at the underlying motivation for the cultural makeover. I frame my analysis around the reaction of the Singapore Christian community to these developments. I focus on the criticisms of the state's ‘liberal’ agenda made by Evangelicals, and describe how the People's Action Party (PAP) regime has defended these policies on utilitarian grounds. The first part ends with a comparative analysis of how the ‘cultural war’ debate was played out in Singapore and the USA. In the second part I examine the procedural aspects of this cultural experimentation. I start with a review of Singapore's political reform. I show that civil society in Singapore has attained a new openness. Yet there remain constraints, leading critics to label the PAP-led government as a ‘soft-authoritarian’ democracy. Singapore's cultural policies, I explain, are essentially an ‘elitist’ state-engineered top-down development. This is in contrast to the experience in the USA, where grassroots activists exercise tangible bottom-up influence on how cultural contests are resolved. My main thesis is to argue that Singapore's recent cultural liberalisation is guided by social–economic expediency notwithstanding the alleged moral risks, and that these are state-commanded liberal experimentations, imposed by the ruling elite upon a constituency that is still largely conservative in moral outlook.

Notes

On the face of it there is no reason to compare Singapore and the USA. After all, these two states are founded on distinct historical narratives, with dissimilar ethnic composition, and have different political systems. However there are some shared experiences, such as the controversies surrounding gay rights, embryonic stem cell research and the gaming industry. In fact the lead protagonists in the Singapore scenario, namely the Evangelicals, have deep historical and ideological ties to the USA. What my comparison seeks to do is to ponder whether, and explore why, the famed ‘cultural war’ in the USA is, or is not, happening in Singapore. In so doing I hope via the comparative study to bring into sharper focus the unique characteristics of Singapore's cultural experimentation.

The 1990 census shows the breakdown as 88.3 and 6.7 per cent respectively. In fact, the Singapore religious demographic is almost ethnically defined, and according to the 2000 census so distributed by percentage: Malay Muslims, 14.9; Indian Hindus, 4; Chinese Buddhists and Taoists, 51; and Christians (the most multiracial grouping), 14.6 (Tong, 2007, pp. 37–39).

This is a simplification. Obviously there is complex overlapping of traits in the diverse Christian traditions and denominations. Nevertheless I believe that this generalisation is adequate for the purpose of this study. For more detailed analyses of the various Christian churches' conservative and liberal characteristics, see the following: Shortridge (1976), Bruce (1983), Francis (1984) and Wuthnow (1989).

Most Singapore children, whether in state schools or mission schools, would have encountered Christianity in various forms. In 1984 the government-implemented ReligiousKnowledge (RK) curriculum was one avenue for introducing, among others, the Christian traditions. However as the result of a range of controversies the RKprogramme was withdrawn in 1989. One factor cited was complaints over certain Christian teachers' efforts to seek conversion during RK lessons (Tan, E.K.B., 2008). While proselytising is prohibited, the restriction applies only to formal classroom sessions. During extra-curricular activities, Christian clubs in schools were allowed a fuller range of pursuits, including recruitment of new members. It is here that churches, through their teacher and student members, work on drawing unbelievers into the Christian fold. (One article reports that since 1989 the government has imposed a complete ban on Christian societies in schools, presumably to prohibit proselytisation in or outside classrooms (DeBernardi, 2008).)

See the church website http://seachurches.media.org/articlelive/youth-campus-minstry.html (last accessed 9 March 2012).

Some clarification is necessary here. We should note that Evangelicals do not represent the totality of Christianity in Singapore. Catholicism and liberal Protestanism remain integral facets of the ecclesiastical order there. Neither are the Evangelicals a homogenous entity. They are represented in mainstream denominations such as the Methodists, as well as in free-standing Charismatic Pentecostal churches (see Goh, 2010). Furthermore, to be sure, Evangelicals in Singapore are not an exact clone of their counterparts in the USA. Just as the growth of Christianity globally takes on distinctive local flavour, in like manner the Evangelical movement in Singapore experiences a degree of Asianisation (see Tan-Chow, 2007). Contextualisation notwithstanding, Evangelicals worldwide continue to share fundamental moral yardsticks, not least of which is their common stance on the ‘cultural war’ issues under consideration in this paper.

A press release from the Ministry of Home Affairs in 2009 repeated the prime minster's unequivocal reaffirmation of the traditional family: ‘Singapore is basically a conservative society and the conventional society, a heterosexual stable family, is the norm and the building block of our society’ (MHA, 2009).

This competitive spirit stems from the leadership's keen awareness of Singapore's fragility and vulnerability, an awareness which perpetuates a permanent sense of ‘crisis’. John Clammer (1991) theorises that the ‘crisis mentality’ is deliberate and forms an essential part of the ideological system of the government (see Tan-Chow, 2007, p. 6).

This is a simplification. The reality is of course more complex, with social conservatives and liberals in either party, for example, Republican gays and Evangelical Democrats. However, I believe that at the cultural level the broad conservative–liberal Republican–Democrat generalisation is valid and adequate for this article's purposes. For more detailed analysis of the American liberal and conservative distinction, see Poole and Rosenthal (1984), Abramowitz and Saunders (1998), and Miller and Schofield (2008).

There are exceptions of course. In backroom deals and horse-trading, politicians as individuals and groups do compromise moral presupposition for perceived greater pragmatic political expediency. Nevertheless, on the whole, Republicans and Democrats tend to abide by the broad conservative and liberal cultural assumptions.

A netizen quoted NMP Dr Geh Min's assessment of Singapore's lack of political diversity as the result of the PAP's gradual transformation of its members into ‘homoPAPsters’ (see http://www.singaporeangle.com/2007/01/top_fifteen_sociopolitical_eve_1.html (last accessed 23 April 2012)).

The Ministry of Home Affairs gave due recognition to the leadership of the National Council of Churches of Singapore for their composed and collected response. ‘Had it not been for these sober statements from religious leaders, we would have had serious problems’ (MHA, 2009). Catherine Lim, a long-time social commentator and critic of the government, has also credited the generally more mature discourse (Lim, 2012).

A fact not lost on the government: see note 7.