RYAN URBAN WRITES – Singapore has gained a great deal of success in the last 50 years as the world’s only fully functioning city-state. The only worry now is Lee Kuan Yew’s People’s Action Party has been a little too successful and is being damaged by its own success. Writers at the Economist say that Singapore’s greatly admired education system has produced a generation of highly educated, global citizens who do not have much tolerance for the PAP’s mother-knows-best style of governance.
In an annual rally for LGBT rights (known as the Pink Dot Parade), a crowd filled with members of this younger generation expressed strong feelings of LGBT optimism and dislike for the government’s conservatism.
Prime Minister Lee Hsien Loong took direct opposition to the subject matter and said to Huffington Post reporters “that the country was not ready for same-sex marriage.”
But the tension doesn’t stop there.
During the month of the Pink Dot Parade an Islamic teacher by the name of Dr. Noor Deros started a Wear White Campaign which called the Muslim community to stand together in solidarity against homosexuality by wearing white. Reporters from Today interviewed Faith Community Baptist Church (FCBC) senior pastor Lawrence Khong who voiced his support for the Wear White Campaign and said it was time for the church and like-minded groups, such as Muslims, to oppose Pink Dot “before it is too late”.
The Muslim community has made it extremely clear that they will not stand for this explosive change in the Singapore social code. With growing pressure from the discontent of young Singaporeans and an increasingly large Muslim community, it will be interesting to see if the Singaporean stance on homosexuality will change any time soon in the new year.