Singapore is described as a conservative society. But it was the sexual libertarians who won the battle for the Singapore women's rights group Aware yesterday. The anti-gay group that took over Aware recently was voted out resoundingly at the extraordinary general meeting yesterday, which re-elected the liberal old guard.
And the mainstream media is pleased. That's the impression I got reading the Sunday Times coverage of the meeting.
Unusually the whole front page was devoted to the meeting, attended by nearly 3,000 people, and the triumph of the old guard. The front page photo showed the unsmiling newcomers conceding victory to the smiling old guard sharing the stage with them.
The only distinction the front-page report drew between the two groups was that the newcomers — who seized the leadership in Aware elections five weeks ago but were voted out yesterday — included members of a particular church who were "strongly against homosexuality".
The newcomers were led by a woman lawyer who encouraged them to "join and change Aware because she felt it was promoting lesbianism and homosexuality", said the report.
"In particular, she attacked an Aware sexuality programme for schools, saying it too promoted homosexuality," it added.
It did not say whether the woman lawyer's allegations were true or what the Aware old guard had to say on the issue.
The only indication that Aware promoted other causes besides sex education came from a quote. One of the old guard asked the newcomers at the meeting: "Where were you when women were abused and battered in the home, and girls raped? Where were you when children and husbands of Singapore women were denied citizenship? Where were you? You were not there."
That quote was the only reminder of other issues taken up by Aware in the past. Except for that, this was pretty much a battle between the anti-gay newcomers and the liberal old guard, at least as reported on the Sunday Times front page.
I don't think people should be judged by whether they are gay or straight. But the Sunday Times and its sister paper, the Straits Times, should cover other issues with equal prominence. The economy, for example.
The fact that unemployment among Singaporeans has reached a five-year high of 4.8 percent wasn't reported on the front page last week. That was relegated to the third page.
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