“Any male person who, in public or private, commits, or abets the commission of, or procures or attempts to procure the commission by any male person of, any act of gross indecency with another male person, shall be punished with imprisonment for a term which may extend to 2 years.”

I personally believe that Section 377A is is unjust and should be repealed.

I would like to persuade as many people as I can of this.

What would it take to get Singapore to repeal 377A?

A majority of Singaporeans would have to agree that it should be repealed.

What’s stopping a majority of Singaporeans from agreeing that it should be repealed?

Some Singaporeans are strongly against repealing 377A because they have strong, entrenched, conservative beliefs about homosexuality – they believe that homosexuality is sinful, or that homosexual acts are sinful, that it is a choice that people make, and so on.

While it would be good to eventually persuade them otherwise, I don’t think it’s a very effective strategy to try to win them over.

Rather, I think it makes much more sense to focus on winning over “neutral” Singaporeans who simply haven’t thought very much about the issue.

How do we do that?

There are two things that strike me as important.

First, I believe that we need an Ellen. When Ellen Degeneres first came out to the public in 1997, the world was largely hostile and indifferent to it. It cost her personally – she lost advertisers, she received unpleasant and unwanted attention.

Today, some people might call Ellen fake, or unrelatable (because she’s a wealthy and successful celebrity), and some queer folks criticize her for pandering, and so on – but I think that LGBTQ acceptance in the USA – and by extension, in the world – would not be where it is today without Ellen’s cheerful, friendly disposition reminding hundreds of millions of people that a person can be gay and also normal, charming, likeable, kind.

Second, I believe that we need more visible allies. Pink Dot is a nice start, but it’s a once a year event. It’s better than nothing, but it’s not good enough. For things to change faster, we need more visible symbols and imagery in public life.

Specifically, I find myself thinking that we need more rainbow pins and flags. I first had this thought when I was walking around the Castro district in San Francisco – you could just feel the vibe of the place in all the rainbow imagery – each individual bit might seem somewhat trivial, but it really adds up in aggregate:

I bought an LGBT flag myself afterwards and hung it outside my HDB flat. So far, I haven’t received any sort of complaints. I highly recommend doing the same. If you can add some colors to your home, place of work, desk and so on – why not?

Further reading:

False Consensus Effect –cognitive bias where people tend to “see their own behavioral choices and judgements as relatively common and appropriate to existing circumstances”. Both pro-LGBT and anti-LGBT folks overestimate the degree to which other people care. Most people simply don’t.

Ellen DeGeneres Influenced Gay Rights Views More Than Any Other Celebrity (Study)

How Ellen DeGeneres Helped Change The Conversation About Gays

Read the wikipedia article about Section 377A of the Penal Code (Singapore).