LGBT in South Asia Feel They Have to Come Out Now!








Ten years ago, as radio presenter Joshua Simon was about to share a photo and a video on 
Facebook
, he felt nervous. The images were of him, his friends and hordes of other people enjoying the 2011 edition of 
Singapore’s
 Pink Dot rally, a celebration of the city state’s 
LGBT
 (lesbian, gay, bisexual and transgender) community.
Since its inception in 2009 the rally has drawn thousands of supporters and sponsorship from tech giants 
Google
 and Facebook, despite gay sex being technically illegal in the country. Under Singapore law (albeit one the government has said it will not enforce), gay sex between men is punishable with a jail term of up to two years.  
Simon, now 30, said he didn’t know how his friends would react to the pictures of him at the rally. He had not been open about his sexuality and felt that sharing the images on social media could suggest he was “part of that community”, he said.

“I remember just being scared to even post it or share it … then I started seeing likes from people that I never thought would get it, or would support me. So that was quite incredible,” Simon said.

Joshua Simon. Photo: Handout

In 2019, Simon became one of the faces for Pink Dot. That same year, he pulled out of a TEDx talk hosted by a local university after he was asked not to make “sensitive” comments about his sexuality. That made headlines in Singapore and Simon “pretty much had to then come out to the rest of the country”. 

Today, he is one of three men who call themselves the SG Boys and run a podcast on gay issues, discussing everything from loneliness to what it was like coming out to their families.  

Simon is not alone. Across Southeast Asia, activists are noticing people are more willing to come out, talk about and campaign for LGBT issues and 
rights
. The shift, they say, began about a decade ago but has accelerated in the past five years or so.
Simon attributes his increasing willingness to talk about LGBT issues to a number of things: the crowds at Pink Dot showing him it was okay to openly identify as a gay man; shows on 
Netflix
 portraying LGBT characters as regular, normal people and an increasing number of straight people in Singapore showing support.
Antoni Porowski with Yoko Sakuma in the Netflix miniseries Queer Eye: We’re in Japan! Photo: Netflix
Activists elsewhere in the region, including the Muslim-majority countries of Indonesia and 
Malaysia
, say the shift is a response to increasing religious conservatism that has led to oppression of the LGBT community. In 
Indonesia
, Lini Zurlia, an advocacy officer from the Asean Sogie (Sexual Orientation, Gender Identity and Gender Expression) Caucus, cited the growing number of straight K-pop fans as an opposing force to this rising conservatism. She said 
K-pop
 fans in Indonesia had mobilised online to respond to homophobic tweets, while some stars had publicly shown support for the LGBT community in recent years. 
Thai
 activist Ninar Thanita Wongprasert cited the encouragement of community organisations and how the media was now more likely to depict LGBT characters favourably. In Malaysia, activists said digital platforms were helping people to connect and express their opinions.

As Gavin Chow, who co-founded Malaysia’s People Like Us Hang Out (Pluho) in 2016, said: “People have the passion or drive to do something when the situation is quite bad … They feel if nobody else is doing it then they want to do it.”

Increased Resistance  

As Southeast Asia is largely conservative, advocating for LGBT rights can be an uphill battle. 

Thailand is an exception. It is considering allowing same sex marriages and while there still isn’t full acceptance of LGBT people, a 2019 study by the 
United Nations
 Development Programme found that 69 per cent of non-LGBT Thais reported generally positive attitudes towards LGBT people. Thailand is also a key producer of 
boys love
 dramas, a subgenre depicting erotic relationships between male characters that is popular across Asia and portrays gay relationships as normal. 
And while 
Vietnam
 has decriminalised gay marriage and allows same-sex couples to live together, homosexuality is a crime in other countries. Malaysia and Indonesia have Islamic laws that are even more prohibitive. In Indonesia’s Aceh province, gay men are publicly caned for having same sex relationships.

“We are actually going backwards in terms of society’s acceptance,” said Zurlia.

A man accused of having gay sex is publicly caned by a member of the Sharia police in Banda Aceh, Indonesia. Photo: AFP

Zurlia cited the burning to death of a 42-year-old transgender woman in Indonesia last April and an attempt by lawmakers last year to pass the Family Resilience Bill. The bill included a controversial article requiring members of the public to notify authorities about people in same sex relationships so they could be sent to a government body for rehabilitation. In 2015, Zurlia’s group of activists were attacked when they held a rally on International Day against Homophobia. She said private spaces such as homes or hotel rooms were often raided for homosexual activities. 

Homophobia even crosses borders. Indonesian trolls this month targeted the wedding pictures of a 
Thai gay couple
 on Facebook. The comments began with rants about how homosexuality was “a sin” according to Islam, then snowballed into death threats.

The Malaysian activists felt the greater visibility – especially with LGBT people being open about their sexuality on 
social media
 – had led to more persecution. Thilaga Sulathireh, who founded Justice for Sisters, said she thought the conservative segments of Malaysia “feel this visibility must be curbed”.

“People see our visibility as a threat when in reality, we are everyday people trying to live our lives,” she said.

A pro-gay marriage demonstrator tries to stabilize a giant rainbow flag. Photo: EPA


There has been a backlash in Malaysia, with the number of arrests under Islamic laws increasing, according to activists, although there are no conclusive statistics. In 2018, a Muslim man in his 30s was arrested in the central Selangor state on suspicion of attempting gay sex, an accusation he denies. Malaysia has a dual-track legal system, in which Islamic criminal and family laws applicable to Muslims run alongside secular civil laws. Over 60 per cent of its 32 million population are Malay Muslims.

In what gay activists see as a triumph, the man launched and won a court challenge, arguing that Selangor had no power to enforce an Islamic ban on “intercourse against the order of nature”. Malaysia’s top court ruled in February that the Islamic provision used in Selangor was unconstitutional and authorities had no power to enact the law.

But just last month, Nur Sajat, 35, a prominent transgender entrepreneur in Malaysia, received death threats after a video emerged that purportedly showed her renouncing Islam. She was also recently charged in a Sharia High Court after being accused of insulting Islam by dressing up as a woman at a religious event at her beauty centre in 2018. Sajat has since missed a court date and disappeared.

Still, activists have taken heart from positive developments further afield in Asia. 
Taiwan
 legalised same sex marriage in 2019, while 
India
 stuck down a colonial law in 2018 and decriminalised gay sex. 
Hong Kong
 in 2019 gave a gay civil servant spousal and tax benefits for his husband. Last year the city’s high court ruled that same sex couples should have access to 
public housing
.
Even in Singapore, where the government has said it is up to society to decide its acceptance of LGBT rights, attitudes have thawed slightly as younger Singaporeans become more open to the LGBT community. An Institute of Policy Studies survey found that while 5.6 per cent of respondents felt there was nothing wrong in 
sexual relations
 between two adults of the same sex in 2013, the figured more than doubled to 11.4 per cent in 2018. And 42 per cent of those aged 18 to 25 in 2018 said there was nothing wrong in gay marriage, up from 17.1 per cent in 2013.

There have been multiple attempts by gay men in Singapore to mount constitutional challenges to the colonial era law that criminalises gay sex. Last year, Parliament amended the Maintenance of Religious Harmony Act to make it clear that both religious groups as well as non-religious ones, like the LGBT community, were protected under the law.

Chow said these developments in Asia proved that homosexuality and its growing acceptance were not Western concepts that went against Asian values. “We need to decolonise some of these things,” he said.

Muslim protesters hold an anti-LGBT rally outside a mosque in Banda Aceh, Indonesia. Photo: Reuters

LOST IN TRANSITION

Still, not every LGBT person has the same experience. And whether one is lesbian, gay, bisexual or transgender, how the person presents himself, herself or even themselves, can affect their ability to be loud and proud. Income levels, education levels, location and family acceptance play a part too.

Transgender SG, a volunteer-run group that shares information on transitioning, said one issue for the community was that systems in Singapore did “not acknowledge the existence of transgender people” and this affected their education and search for jobs. During the 
coronavirus pandemic
, for example, they saw transgender people who were on daily wages unable to sustain jobs and forced to request financial assistance.

Early this year, a Singaporean transgender woman known as Ashlee took to Reddit to share her experience of the education system. Ashlee, who identifies as female, recalled how at school she was not allowed to keep her hair long or to wear the girls’ uniform. She also said the education ministry interfered with her hormonal therapy, an allegation the government denies. By the age of 17, Ashlee had decided to drop out of her junior college.

In a Facebook post, the education ministry said: “We are not in a position to interfere with any medical treatment, which is a matter for the family to decide on.” 

The statement invited Ashlee to approach the school for clarification. It said Ashlee should do so to “discuss how the school can support his [sic] schooling better”.

Indonesia’s Zurlia said lesbian women and gay men who conformed with gender norms had “an easier life”. “Because no one can tell if you’re gay or lesbian,” she said. “But for those who are transgender, or lesbians who express masculine as well as gay men who wear their appearances more feminine, that is going to be harder.”

She said those in Indonesia who lived in big cities and studied in private schools had an easier time than students in rural areas and public schools. Acceptance in public depended on the venue. At K-pop concerts or gay clubs, for instance, “young people can dress however they want”. In regular public places? “Every time I’m out with my partner there will be people who stare at us,” she said.

Sulathireh in Malaysia said matters were complicated by a person’s legal environment, support systems and class and this was especially so for transgender sex workers. She said 
religion
also played a role, with gay Muslim men facing pressure “to return to the right path, get married, change, it really damages their self-love and really restricts access to health care services and other things,” she said. “Visibility is dependent on so many complex factors.”
People attend Pink Dot, an annual event organised in support of the LGBT community in Singapore. Photo: Reuters

OVER THE RAINBOW

Activists said cooperation between advocacy groups domestically and across the region had helped bring LGBT causes into mainstream consciousness.

Chow of Pluho said he was grateful that when he started his organisation he could draw on the experience of other activists, such as those from Seksualiti Merdeka – a festival of art, theatre, music, and film that launched in 2008 to coincide with Malaysia’s National Day but was banned in 2011. In the same way, he wanted to help younger and newer groups. “There is a need for a more coordinated movement,” he said.

For Zurlia, cooperation was also about safety. After her group’s rally was attacked in 2015, the activists started teaming up with other groups rather than organising their own rallies. They now march with women’s rights groups on International Women’s Day and community organisations on Labour Day.

People see our visibility as a threat when in reality, we are everyday people trying to live our livesThilaga Sulathireh

In Thailand, Wongprasert said LGBT issues had been tied to pro-democracy movements with LGBT activists helping to organise the political events, thus bringing queer issues into the mainstream.

Cooperation goes across borders. Sulathireh, who was involved in Seksualiti Merdeka in Malaysia, said the event was inspired by Singapore’s IndigNation SG – a month-long series of LGBT events that started in August 2005 and coincides with the city state’s National Day. “The 2000s were a critical point … many of these groups were connecting with each other,” she said.

Going forward, the activists hope to see legal reform, better funding, more cooperation between advocacy groups and continued representation of LGBT people in the media. 

Television shows were important, said Simon, because they gave people a reference for what LGBT people were like.  

“They start to empathise with the character and start to have that understanding that, ‘Oh, that person happened to be gay I didn’t know that, that person is cool though. Okay, maybe I should start to rethink how I view queer people’,” he said.

Sulathireh said laws criminalising LGBT people had to go. “If you’re out but you cannot report a case of violence or discrimination against you, then how do you go about everyday life? I guess we’re focused on really looking at meaningful protection, fulfilment and promotion of rights, and no discrimination and violence against LGBT people,” she said.

“At the same time, it is important for everyday queer people, whether visible or not, to be equipped with knowledge about rights [and to] educate people that gender identity is real, that conversion therapy is a form of torture that has a harmful impact on LGBT people.” 

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