Over the weekend something amazing happened in Singapore – there was gay rights rally! Singapore is an authoritarian effectively one-party state where gay sex is illegal (thanks to laws left over from colonial times). It has a history of clamping down on any moves to try to advocate for a progressive approach, so to see something like this happing in such a country is pretty special. For years gay life in Singapore was underground, there were a few discrete nights at discos, a few incredibly camp people on TV but that was pretty much it. The arrival of internet made finding other gay people much easier for Queer Singaporeans but it’s still quite a conservative place.

The event was organised by a group called Pink dot sg who themselves look pretty organised by the look of their website and the fact that they have ambassadors for their cause and it more or less coincided with the International Day Against Homophobia (IDAHO) which was the day after.

Despite the rather bland reporting in the state media, this is quite an unprecedented event, Singapore had a sort of circuit party for a few years earlier in the decade but it was shut down because it went “against the moral values of a large majority of Singaporeans” according to the Police. It’s good to see such a big turnout for such a visible gay rights event and great to see the Police didn’t shut it down. Let’s hope it continues. Shiok one!