People Like Us

This is an issue that most of us may not care about because we are as straight as a rod and all our friends the same as us. For a lot of people, this is something that affects other people, like those people with AIDS, those dying of hunger, those with a son hanged on the gallows, those people not like us. We cannot imagine; we cannot empathise. But this is different. You have to sit up and notice because this issue will determine the future in many ways. It has to become more than a theoretical or an ideological or a doctrinal or a political issue because these are real people like you and me who will or will not be forever estranged from the church depending on how things play out.

Recently, it was announced that Liberty League was given a $100,000 grant to help promote healthy sexual identity. To a pointed question on whether Liberty League championed gay rights, Leslie Leung, founder and executive director, explained in fairly neutral terms:

"We champion human rights really. It's about people being able to say, I'm human and sexual orientation is so wide. Being gay and lesbian is part of it; coming out of it is part of it as well."

Of course to certain portions of the gay community, this statement is not at all neutral because of the fact that Leung said, "coming out of it is part of [sexual orientation]" (See dubdew's "Not actually liberal"). Then again, certain portions of the conservative Christian community will take issue that Leung said, "being gay and lesbian is part of [sexual orientation]" too. It is a matter of how you look at it.

In a way, the opposing parties in this issue take offence because they are so alike: they believe so much in their sexual identity. Conservative Christians believe that there is one right or proper sexual orientation; gays know deeply that it was neither choice nor "unfortunate circumstances": this is just the way things are.

So it is fated that they will never agree.

Liberty League doesn't seem didatic. The methods it uses include counselling, self-help groups, and open-ended discussions. But the gay community did a little research into Leslie Leung's Liberty League and found that it published a booklet titled "Freedom of Choice", which was written from a decidedly ex-gay point of view. Affiliation does matter. People Like Us, a gay group here in Singapore, wrote a letter to the forum expressing its displeasure. The letter didn't make it to print:

Media Release
From People Like Us
19 Jan 2006, 20.30h

Singapore govt gives $100,000 to Christian anti-gay group

By giving $100,000 to Liberty League, as reported by ChannelNewsAsia (CNA), the Singapore government is helping to promote a religious cause founded on unscientific and psychologically damaging methods.

Liberty League intends to “promote gender and sexual health” through “conduct[ing] sexuality talks in schools” – CNA report.

However, Liberty League’s website promotes a book ‘Freedom of Choice’. The book’s subjects were almost totally from the Christian group, Choices, which runs programmes teaching that homosexuality is a psychological dysfunction. The book thus promotes this kind of pseudo-therapy propagated by fundamentalist Christian groups.

Mr Leslie Lung, the founder of Liberty League has long been known to be associated with “ex-gay” ministries. The “ex-gay” or “reparative therapy” movement is strongly associated with the more extreme churches in the United States. Liberty League’s website itself uses terms such as “sexual brokenness”, “addiction and abuse”.

In a seminar organised by the Graduates Christian Fellowship on 13 October 2005, which described homosexuality as a psychological problem, Liberty League was touted as resource for counseling. It was recommended by Mr Tan Thuan Seng, the President of Focus on the Family, Singapore (FOTF-Sg) who is known to regularly give anti-gay talks in Christian circles.

FOTF-Sg is an affiliate of Christian- and US-based Focus on the Family as can be seen from the latter’s website. The anti-gay, proselytising stance of Focus on the Family is well known. One may therefore infer that since it was recommended by FOTF-Sg, Liberty League shares a similar position regarding faith and homosexuality.

Liberty League is also lauded on the website of Exodus Singapore, the Christian ex-gay group, http://www.exodusasiapacific.org/singapore.htm. It too speaks of “sexual brokenness” and teaches “God’s plan for sexuality”. On its Policy page, it says, “Exodus Asia Pacific cites homosexual tendencies as one of many disorders that beset fallen humanity. Christ offers a healing alternative to those with sexual and relational problems.”

An 18-year-old student who had attended one of Mr Lung’s earlier talks in her school wrote in her report (deposited with People Like Us) that she had to “sit through a one-hour treatise on why homosexuality was wrong, and if we had any same-sex attractions, we should immediately seek help and ‘turn straight’.

“He made several references to God and the Bible during the talk,” she wrote, and that “it was pretty insensitive to everyone non-Christian.”

It should be noted that in his statement to CNA, Mr Lung spoke of “coming out of [homosexuality]”. At first glance, this phrase appears similar to “coming out” – the well-accepted process of healthy psychological development for gay and lesbian persons – but it is in fact a trojan horse for the opposite: destructive self-denial of a person’s own sexuality.

PLU finds it reprehensible that while the World Health Organization¹ and reputable psychological associations² no longer treat homosexuality as a disorder, the National Volunteer and Philanthropy Centre (NVPC) would still fund an organization that has been founded on this unscientific and damaging premise. (More information on this in Annex.)

The government needs to explain why the NVPC thinks $100,000 is money well spent when given to a disguised religious cause based on unscientific psychotherapeutic approaches that seek to deform young people’s sense of self-worth and psychological health.

PLU also notes that the published guidelines for eligibility for funding from the NVPC include the stipulation that all programmes must be secular, and believes the government needs to explain its grant to Liberty League when even 18 year-old students can so clearly spot its religious agenda.

The government also needs to explain how this grant is consistent with Prime Minister Lee Hsien Loong’s claim that the government is not homophobic, made in a comment to the Foreign Correspondents Association on 6 October 2005.

(via Popagandhi)

How can this be resolved? What conservative Christians don't understand is that no matter how much the church says that it welcomes and affirms homosexuals as people of worth and dignity, no matter how open they appear to be, as long as the church states that homosexuality is a sin, gays will never walk in. But how can the church, the protector of the ancient doctrine, not make a stand?

In the US, which is probably a decade ahead of Singapore as far as this issue is concerned, a pastor wrestles with the `the homosexual question' and eventually concludes (tentatively):

"Perhaps we need a five-year moratorium on making pronouncements."

This is a remarkable conclusion, the first I've heard in this debate, and I'm not sure if the risk of the entire church keeping quiet is worth it, but I'm convinced that this may work on a personal level. Perhaps if we forget about our sexual orientation for a while and focus on basic things again, like knowing God, pleasing God, doing good, perhaps God will speak to each of us along the way?

I am not confident of this answer, as I am not confident of what is in my heart. But it may be worth a shot.