Why The Rejection of Snowball 04 is Bad for Singapore

By Clarence

on 12 December 2004

I work in a creative industry – not the arts but finance – yes creativity does happen there too. One of my most memorable working years was with a Western financial institution. After working there for about a year, I came to realise that the general managers in Thailand and Indonesia were gay. Then I found out our head of credit for Asia was gay. And our chief financial modeller (think “excel spreadsheet super-techie”) was gay too – in fact he had left Malaysia because he did not believe that he could live openly as a gay man there and is now settled in London. None of my straight colleagues had any problems with this. This was also the team that did most of one particular financing product ever done in Singapore which reduced borrowing costs for millions of dollars for some large Government linked corporations.

One of my funniest memories, is when my straight boss – who is still happily married to a stunningly beautiful wife and has three sons – came to our team just before the annual dinner and dance which was to have a Hollywood theme. Almost bursting with glee, he suggested this great brainwave he had. He thought of getting the entire Singapore team to dress up as characters in the movie, Priscilla Queen of the Desert – a movie about three drag queens traversing the Australian desert to go do a drag show in the outback. I remember cringing and objecting quite vehemently. I also remember being deeply closeted and conflicted over my sexual orientation then.

While I no longer work with this institution, I have fond memories of my colleagues and the work we did. My only regret was that I wish I was out then. Since finally coming to terms with myself, I have embarked on a mini pilgrimage – to go back to all the people I worked with in that company and just be myself. It is a life project I have given myself five to seven years to complete.

I remember one of those persons I worked with, Linda (not her real name) – also happily married and a mother of two highly gifted children. I came out to her a couple of years ago at lunch. As we ended our lunch meeting she invited me to bring my family over for dinner one day. I replied that my mother visits me regularly and I would try to do that the next time she was here. Linda gave me a quizzical, “are you insane?” look then said, “I didn’t mean your mother.” Only then did it dawn on me that this lady saw my partner Han and I as my family. It was one of the most affirming moments in my life journey as a gay person. Linda, a Singaporean rose from being a secretary in London to spearhead our capital markets distribution business in South East Asia.

Another person Mengtee, a lawyer I work with from my company’s legal department – a Christian – Methodist I think and definitely straight - once asked another straight colleague of mine, Jinwei, if I was gay. Jinwei, who knew I was gay asked him what made him think so. My lawyer colleague said, “I don’t know. Just my gaydar giving me strong signals.” Jinwei who had no idea what gaydar meant, just said, “I don’t know. Why don’t you ask him.”

A rather perturbed and protective (over me) Jinwei asked me later that day what a gaydar was and while giving him a crash course in Gay 101, he told me about Mengtee’s question. I had a really good laugh at Jinwei’s bewilderment and told him to stop being so protective of me though I really appreciated it.

A month or so later when I was having lunch with Jinwei and Mengtee, I looked Mengtee in the eye, smiled and said, “I am really impressed with your gaydar.” We had another round of good laugh and Mengtee subsequently sought my advice on how to turn down potential suitors who came to him in the gay bars he visits whenever his work takes him to London. It seems he likes hanging out with his gay friends and finds the music in the gay bars much better. I tried to convince him that an effective strategy would be to give my name and telephone numbers to these suitors.

Another memorable experience I have is when Jinwei came over to my home to meet my partner because he wanted to buy my partner’s digital camera. Jinwei brought along his wife, Susan and two year old daugther Melissa to my home. Jinwei who is quite religious does not agree that it is okay to be gay. He is uncomfortable with the notion due to his religious convictions. Yet he is able to tolerate the differences and give space. I respect him tremendously for this.

Did I tell you Mengtee was one of the most creative lawyers in our legal department? He has since worked in London and is now deciding whether to return to Singapore or work in Tokyo. Did I also tell you that Jinwei, is probably the second best financial modeller (again think “excel spreadsheet super-techie”) I have ever worked with in the last 15 years?

I could also tell you about Kwee – one of the best structurers and deal makers in our Financial Derivatives division. She recently married an Austrian and keeps pestering me to bring my partner over to dinner with her and her husband soon.

I have often felt like an intellectual dwarf in the midst of these colleagues. Their expertise in their respective fields is actually quite intimidating.

But what has all this to do with Snowball 04? Plenty.

For many gay people the disallowance of Snowball 04 is final evidence of hypocritical discrimination in Singaporean society. Suck out their economic juices but don’t let them drink. For the religious conservatives, it is a victory – the tide of moral deterioration has been stemmed one more time at least for a while more. Further the decision to disallow was made so suddenly and so publicly that it has given people no room to move except in the direction of polarization.

In Safehaven’s relationship with anti-gay Christians we have taken the position that Safehaven will not end up polarised the way gay and anti-gay forces in the United States are polarised. For that reason on the front page of our website, we provide a link to Choices, the group that seeks to help people change from being gay. While we disagree with Choices both on religious and strong empirical grounds, we still believe people need information to make good decisions for their lives and Safehaven has an obligation to provide that information even if we disagree. If people attend a group like Choices and benefit then we celebrate with them regardless. Of course Choices itself will not reciprocate. Safehaven’s stance however, has always been conciliatory and focussed on the creation of reasonable space for living and learning.

What troubles me however about the rejection of the Snowball 04 licence application is not that I may not have a party to go for this Christmas. It is not even that this rejection seems to contradict the recent statement that Singapore welcomes diversity and wants Singaporeans to pursue their dreams. Or that the licence denial unwittingly further polarises the public discourse on the place of gay Singaporeans or residents in this nation.

What troubles me is a far bigger issue. It is the impact of this denial on Singapore’s rating on the Creativity Index. In his book, The Rise of the Creative Class, Professor Richard Florida who is now Hirst Professor at the School of Public Policy at George Mason University demonstrated quite cogently that one of the key indicators of an economically thriving city is its “ability to attract the creative class, (and) to translate that underlying advantage into creative economic outcomes in the form of new ideas, new high-tech businesses and regional growth.” The creative class comprises of people who are knowledge workers as well as the traditional artists and entertainers.

He developed a scale called the Creativity Index which was made up of four equally weighted scales which measured, the percentage of creativity workers, the level of high tech enterprises, the level of innovation and the tolerance for diversity. Professor Florida noted that the tolerance for diversity could be measured by a Gay Index which indicated the extent to which a city had a thriving and vibrant gay community – not that gays are necessarily more creative (though I challenge anyone to take a sampling of the sexual orientation of people working in our creative industries) – but that a city that can allow significant public space for gays is a city that is able to tolerate diversity and difference.

On this point he found that cities in the United States that were thriving economically tended to be cities which scored high on the Gay Index. Eight of the top ten economically vibrant cities with a population of over 1,000,000 (49 cities) scored no worse than 16th rank on the Gay Index. Similarly seven of the top ten mid-size cities (32 cities with population 500,000 – 1,000,000) scored no worse than a ranking of 20 on the Gay Index.

Our policy makers need to look at the bigger picture. The issue goes beyond whether it is okay for two men to kiss just outside a gay party and offend some people. It goes beyond the tourist dollar and it goes beyond moral conservatism. The issue is much more critical – it is about developing Singapore as thriving creative economy in the 21st century. The disallowance of the event definitely brings Singapore down a significant number of notches on the Creativity Index. If this signals a new trend in the way our policy makers view gays then the recent disallowance of Snowball 04 does not bode well for Singapore.

I am troubled for that reason because I wasn’t going for Snowball 04 this year.