What follows are the full transcripts of MM Lee Kuan Yew's remarks at the dialogue session with the youth wing of the People's Action Party last Saturday and his interview with Reuters that have been carried by newspapers around the world.
Reuters transcript:
Q: Okay and then, homosexuality. You had a discussion with Young PAP members at the weekend. You know we study the Straits Times words for whatever they write to say about you. You seem to indicate that you wanted to decriminalise homosexuality. However, the Ministry of Home Affairs, when they viewed the Penal Code at the end of last year, they didn't say that. Do you think that in the new cosmopolitan Singapore, the government wants homosexual act between men should be legalised?
Mr Lee: I am not in charge of government policy. I am just a Minister Mentor. When my son became Prime Minister he wanted to make it quite clear to everybody that I don't decide policy. I am just a Mentor. My value is that of a mentor. So, I expressed my views, they make the decision. I just received a copy of my The Cam (?), the Cambridge University magazine. The latest Cam has one article of how homosexuality has been more or less part of Cambridge life and even part of Cambridge literature. I don't know if that is so. But I mean they produced documents, not documents, they produced books and they have photographs of the people involved. I was surprised not to see John Mayorarchis (?) photo in there. Because he is well known to be that way inclined. Maybe they didn't have enough evidence. So, they didn't want to put something which was tendentious or they couldn't prove. It shows how the Americans have pushed this, followed by the Europeans and given a lot of push to homosexuals the world over. And they say, look, let's go with the world, let's not pretend it doesn't exist. I think Muslim societies will be loath to change.
Q: Of course.
Mr Lee: I believe Buddhist and Hindu societies maybe more accommodating over a period of time But the Minister for Home Affairs it He has the pulse of the heartlands and we don't want to unnecessarily go against the people.
Q: Of course you said mainly the policy you have basically is that we don't want to promote it as a lifestyle, you know, sometimes you ban gay events or gay films but of course?
Mr Lee: We are not promoters of it.
Q: Exactly.
Mr Lee: And we are not going to allow Singapore to become the vanguard of South East Asia
Q: Exactly. Exactly.
Mr Lee: We will follow the world. A few respectable steps behind.
Q: But would you consider, I mean, did we read this correctly you saying that we should decriminalise it eventually?
Mr Lee: Eventually I cannot put a finger on it. But I would say if this is the way the world is going and Singapore is part of that interconnected world and I think it is, then I see no option for Singapore but to be part of it. They tell me and anyway it is probably half-true that homosexuals are creative writers, dancers, etcetera. And there is some biblical evidence of that and if we want creative people then we got to put up with their idiosyncrasies. So, long as they don't infect the heartland.
April 21, 2007
Excerpt of dialogue session with the youth wing of the People's Action Party held in the Dragonfly room of St James Power Station, a trendy nightspot:
Q: Good afternoon, Sir. I've just got a quick question because you were talking just now about integration and globalisation. So I've just got a question. I'm Loretta Chen from Hougang. I'm a theatre director, so my question has to deal with censorship. Sir, recently I actually wrote a proposal to the Esplanade and it's a play based on Annabel Chong 251. I was very happy, it was passed and I staged it. Most of the scenes in there were left completely intact except for one line which goes, "In the beginning was the body..." and those five words were taken out, which I happily obliged. But my question is where is censorship headed for the next two decades and what are the paradigms or what are the OB markers for censorship in the next two decades? Thank you.
MM Lee: I can't answer that because I don't know how the world is going. We are constantly adapting to the world. We do not live in isolation. We are being educated using the English language. We are open to all the influences that come with the English language. We also read the Chinese language, we read the Malay language, we read our native languages, and we are travelling and people are coming here and doing business here. So, if you look at Singapore in the 1950s or 1960s or 1970s and the Singapore today, it's different because you are adjusting to the reality of the world. So when the Cabinet was discussing Crazy Horse, you know, they applied for Crazy Horse to come here, and there was very strong objections. So I came up to give my tuppence worth. I said, "Look, once upon a time, Singaporeans watched peep shows. You know, you pay 10 cents and you turn an old film in a box at Chinese wayangs. Today, they are going to Paris, they go to the Folies Bergere, I mean it doesn't make sense anymore." I said, "Let it go." So they said, "No, we must stop this, stop that." I said, "You either go with the world and be part of the world or you will find that we become a quaint, a quixotic, esoteric appendage of the world." But at the same time is everything okay? Does everything go? I said, "No." So if you look at the Catholic Church and they have lasted 2,000 years, there are certain Nos. You take their most contentious and controversial no - no contraceptives. So if you read in the newspapers, the newspaper say, "The Filipino women want contraceptives." And it's being flouted by all the Italians and Romans there when their birth rate is lower than Singapore, and it's not by the natural method.
So, is it useless then? No, I don't think it's useless. The Church says: I proclaim that this is bad. But if you do it, you will know that you are doing something which somebody in high authority have thought over and think it's wrong. You can overrule that, this is your decision, you do it. But I think in the same way we have to decide on behalf of society what is the long-term effect of this, and if you prohibit it will it work, and if it doesn't work and it is flouted, does it do harm? Which is better? - to let it run freely or say, "No", have it surreptitiously flouted at the margins - you've got to weigh the two odds. But, I mean you take this business of homosexuality. It raises tempers all over the world, and even in America. If in fact it is true, and I have asked doctors this, that you are genetically born a homosexual because that's the nature of the genetic random transmission of genes, you can't help it. So why should we criminalise it? But there's such a strong inhibition in all societies. Christianity, Islam, even the Hindu, Chinese societies and we are now confronted with a persisting aberration. But is it an aberration? It's a genetic variation. So what do we do? I think we pragmatically adjust, carry our people... don't upset them and suddenly upset their sense of propriety and right and wrong, but at the same time let's not go around like this moral police do in Malaysia, barging into people's rooms and say "khalwat". That's not our business. So, you have to take a practical, pragmatic approach to what I see is an inevitable force of time and circumstance.
Dr Vivian Balakrishnan (Minister for Community Development, Youth and Sports, and Second Minister for Information, Communications and the Arts): Where does that leave the family and family values in Singapore of the future?
MM Lee: It depends on how strongly you inculcate those values. You know, the Catholic Church says, "If you give me your child for 12 years, I've made him a Catholic for life." And I think that's true. The school cannot do for this child what the parents must do themselves. That's true everywhere. And I think each community, each pair of parents must decide what kind of values they want to inculcate in their children. And, therefore, in the early years, what kind of... if you're a Catholic, you want to send him to a Catholic school or a school where they will teach certain values or whatever, and make sure they don't mix up with friends who will get them into bad habits. But once they are grown up, in their late teens, well, they got to mix up with the world and... but internally they already have their moral compass.
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Reader's Comments
Put up with their idiosyncrasies
So much for being part of the society...now it's just putting up with our idiosyncrasies.
I don't even know what our idiosyncrasies are?
...a soft wrist?
Why is he so Catholic friendly now? Is that the new model he wants to echo here in Singapore? Whatever happened to "regardless of race, language or religion" in the Singapore pledge?
Sometimes it's difficult to understand things that you don't feel, but atleast he made the effort.
So Thank you!
I'm sorry did I miss something? "Biblical evidence" that half of us are creative writers and dancers? Since when did Lee Kuan Yew start citing the Bible?
He sounded like we are some vegetable or high calcium milk, since everyone is eating these stuff, we are silly not to do the same. Hardly genuine in treating us equally.
But then again, it is probably the best argument he can think of to convince the conservative Singaporeans that the change is the must.
I remeber Lim Hern Kiang reversed the " singles cannot buy 3 room HDB flats" ONLY after HIS own sister at age 30 wanted to buy a flat for herself.
Singapore Politicians habitually pretend to listen to public, but real interest lies with getting the best for self and family.Period.
Well you would have to be very bloody dumb not to have encountered heaps of homosexuality at Cambridge no matter when you studied there. At MMs college was a Scottish law lecturer who was as camp as a row of tents and gave the most entertaining bitchy lectures in Roman Law.
There were many unmarried Fellows of all Colleges who much preferred the company of cute undergraduates and were always entertaining them in their rooms. And I think that quietly if you allowed them to suck your cock you might get a better mark in your exams oh yes that went on I am fairly sure.
More than a few cute undergraduates knew the value of the casting couch.
MM is a mighty intelligent man. He knows that by espousing globalisation he is bound to be asked by someone who matters, " I say Mr Lee if you are all for world trade you have to be for world rights of people to be themselves sexually or else you will end up like Burma with a nasty dictatorship and very few friends in the world."
He cannot keep deriding people for saying things that cause him to examine his own prejudices and biases.
I had to laugh, He EVEN managed a dig at Malaysia for the religious police coming in and saying Khalwat which is more likely to be levelled at an hetero couple than at gays.
But I guess he also meant that disgraceful trial of Anwar Ibrahim when a supposedly stained mattress was brought into court.
Surely the moral lowpoint of any modern Asian nation's development and all of it caused by the evil Mahathir.
Chances are someone high up in the PAP has come out or been caught redhanded. As happened to Alan Jones the right wing shock jock on Sydney radio.
Yes by all means get the whole country talking about it.Startle the heartland. Shake them out of their comfort zone. Remember to take the message to them, you may not like what we do and you will not do it yourselves but just leave us alone and give us the basic right to exist and be ourselves ..even to be creative.
That intelligent and civilised tolerance is the atmosphere MM enjoyed at Cambridge even in those days gone by. Let him not forget to bestow it upon his rainbow hued nation.
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