Identity mobilisation - a threat to society

Identity mobilisation - a threat to society

This morning, I received an email from a friend who told me that supporters of the new executive committee (exco) of AWARE are circulating an article that justifies an anti-gay position.

He asked me if I had any article that could rebut the points.

I told him in reply that it would not be worth the trouble. People who adopt a strongly anti-gay opinion are generally not interested in facts. You can feed them with as much information and logic as you have the time for, but they are just not receptive to it. It is important to bear this in mind in order to grasp the big picture as the AWARE controversy comes to a head this weekend.
Laying out facts still important

This is not to say that laying out facts and reason are not important. Most people on this earth are pragmatic and reasonable. They are what we call the "middle ground" who can be convinced with good evidence and rational arguments.

However, most of the time, they are not interested, and it is very hard to make people take an interest in something when they don't see what it has to do with them.

Nonetheless, from time to time, some or more of them will, for their own reasons, be curious, and that's when they will go out to find information. So it's still better to lay out the facts and arguments for secularism, justice and inclusiveness than not to do so.

It will also be interesting to dissect the tactics of the Thio-guard -- the anti-gay side led by Thio Su Mien -– to more clearly see the threat they and their ilk pose to social stability. It is wrong to assume that controversies such as this will be resolved through facts and reason. They will not. The anti-gay side is using a playbook that harks back to a more atavistic time.

Motive

Before I recount the key stages in the battle, it is important to be clear what their motive was: to strip AWARE's work of anything that is even remotely gay-tolerant or gay-affirmative. By now, it should be obvious that this impulse springs from the religious aims of Thio Su Mien and her sidekicks to eradicate homosexuality from Singapore society.

Plans A, B and C

They began with stealth. They launched a dawn raid to capture the organisation without saying a thing about what they stood for and why they sought office. For the first two weeks, they avoided the media and any questions about what they're about.

When calls for them to declare their intentions became too loud to ignore, they tried Plan B: give evasive answers. Interviewed on Channel NewsAsia, Josie Lau, the new president, denied there had been any conspiracy, claiming they were individually, coincidentally interested in getting involved only because the old AWARE had "lost its focus" without much elaboration what they meant by that. Asked what AWARE would now do should a lesbian facing discrimination approached them for help, she answered,

"the new Exco will have to take a look at this and see what is the direction we want to take".

--'Today' newspaper, 20 April 2009, AWARE
president says will not step down despite pressure

Public reaction to that television interview was almost uniformly negative. People could see that they were not being forthright, so within less than a week, Plan B was abandoned in favour of Plan C: attack.

Big Bertha [1] was rolled out in the form of Thio Su Mien at a press conference held by the new guard on 23 April 2009. She unashamedly revealed that it had been a conspiracy after all, orchestrated by her. She also demonstrated that indeed, the aim had all along been to purge AWARE of any gay-tolerant content and use AWARE as a vehicle to push her fundamentalist Christian views on homosexuality onto Singapore society.

Background

AWARE – the Association of Women for Action and Research was taken over in late March 2009 by a group of women with extremely conservative Christian beliefs. The key office holders all belong to the same church -- Church of Our Savior. Affiliated with this church is Choices, a group that promotes the hocus-pocus idea of being able to "cure" homosexuality, and Focus on the Family, the Singapore arm of the rabidly anti-gay vanguard of the American religious right.

A fight between supporters of the old guard and the new exco will culminate in an extraordinary general meeting on 2 May 2009.

The Straits Times reported of the press conference:

Dr Thio explained that her concern about the direction that Aware was taking was partly prompted by a letter from a parent who was concerned that the society was promoting a homosexual agenda.

He wrote to the Today newspaper in 2007 to ask why Aware's choice of a movie for a charity show was Spider Lilies, about two lesbians who fall in love.

Dr Thio said she went on to discover that in Aware's comprehensive sexuality education programme, which is taken to schools, homosexuality is regarded as a neutral word, not a negative word.

"I started thinking, 'Hey, parents , you better know what's happening',"' she said.

"I talked to parents. I said: You better do something about this, otherwise your daughter will come back and say, 'Mum, I want to marry my girlfriend.'

"Or your son will say: 'Dad, I want to marry my boyfriend'."

[snip]

Pointing out that Aware's programme was already in 30 schools, she said: "The suggestion is that in this programme, young girls from 12 to 18 are taught that it's okay to experiment with each other.

"And this is something which should concern parents in Singapore. Are we going to have an entire generation of lesbians?"

-- Straits Times, 24 April 2009, Lawyer's
key role in Aware coup

New exco leaders at the same press conference echoed her allegations:

The new exco said AWARE had become a single purpose organisation overly concerned with promoting lesbianism.

They repeatedly raised examples, like how the old guard had backed a lesbian film screening in 2007 and organised a lesbian-friendly Mother’s Day event in 2006.

-- Channel NewsAsia, 23 April 2009, New exco wants
to bring AWARE back to its "original cause"

The problem with mounting an attack is that one would need enough force to achieve success. Even booming Big Bertha cannot do it alone without infantry. So the same sentences served two purposes: to cast aspersions on their opponent, and to rally the faithful. From the above alone, you can spot them pressing these emotional buttons wherever marked by this little symbol :

* There is an invasive homosexual agenda
* Parents – be afraid!
* Daughter will marry girlfriend
* Son will marry boyfriend
* Young girls experimenting with each other
* Entire generation of lesbians
* Promoting lesbianism

It does not matter if these allegations are patently untrue, as the old guard pointed out in their press conference the following evening. Truth is not material. Effect is.

These wild claims are proven bogeymen that can serve to alarm those who might otherwise only be moderately sympathetic to their anti-gay agenda. The hope is that others would be horrified enough to cast in their lot with Thio and company.

Gay marriage

On Tuesday, 28 April 2009, a letter by Josie Lau was published in the Straits Times [2]. It was written in response to Minister for Community Development, Youth and Sports Vivian Balakrishnan's comment that religion should be kept out of petty politics, and that a rainbow coalition is vital for any group here to make meaningful change [3].

This "parent" was no ordinary parent. It was none other than George Lim Heng Chye, a well-known homophobe, who wrote to the press many times displaying his ignorance and bigotry.

He is also a member of the same church as Thio and the exco officer-bearers, i.e.- the Church of Our Savior.

Whitewashing the issue by saying that "Aware is a secular organisation and we welcome women of all races and religions to be members," Lau added,

What about the interests of lesbians or what some call 'sexual orientation' or 'sexuality' rights? It depends on what interest is at stake. For example, we do not think lesbians should be discriminated against in the workplace, either in terms of promotion or pay; like every woman, they deserve equality of opportunity. The only relevant consideration is merit. There is a world of difference between fair employment rights and claims to 'same-sex marriage'.

-- Josie Lau in letter to the Straits Times, published
28 April 2009, What being inclusive means

Psychology professor George Bishop pointed out, in a comment posted on the LGBT email list SiGNeL, that even though the letter comes across as very reasonable, civil and inclusive, it nevertheless employs the same scare tactics.

The next paragraph, however, exposes her tactics. "There is a world of difference between fair employment rights and claims to 'same-sex marriage'." Same-sex marriage? The old guard at AWARE was promoting same sex marriage? Of course, she doesn't claim this directly and if pressed would deny it but it's implied in context.

[snip]

The tactic is to heighten people's fears about an issue that isn't even on the agenda and scare them out of voting for your opponent.

-- George Bishop in a comment on SiGNeL, 28 April 2009

Mobilising religion

Besides stoking fear to rally like-minded people to one's frontlines, there is also the use of religious affiliation to build solidarity for the political cause.

At multiple sermons on Saturday and Sunday, 25 – 26 April 2009, the Church of Our Saviour lent support to the Thio cause and called upon the faithful to support them. (I have also heard that some other churches did likewise, but have not yet received corroborating reports).

Calling for solidarity, he implored the women in the church to "unite with the sisters and support them." He also said that the new team’s actions are not "a crusade against the people," but instead a move to ensure that the nation does not cross the line drawn by God.

-- The Online Citizen, 27 April 2009, Staff sent out email asking members to vote at Aware EOGM. Link.

Listen to this audio (two and a half minutes) that I got thanks to Wayangparty.com. You will hear a pastor -- I think it's Derek Hong -- lauding what Alan Chin and his wife Josie Lau (the new president of AWARE) are doing. He called for prayer "to lift the family up to the Lord". Many members of the congregation then came forward, placed their hands on Chin and began speaking in tongues, as if possessed.

The tactic was one of getting his flock to participate in a public, demonstrative act of pledging. Done in an environment of community, which a place of worship is, it makes it hard for other members of the congregation to stand back and disassociate themselves from the program. There is the subliminal fear of estrangement from deity and social community should they demur. Social pressure therefore is applied on the whole congregation to stand as one behind the church-endorsed cause.

* * * * *

Identity mobilisation

This is the politics of identity mobilisation. There is no need for facts or reason. Appeals to fear and group belonging are what count. The more exaggerated the threat, the more effective. The more authoritative the calls to group solidarity (e.g. by religious leaders) the better.

A danger to society is posed when identity mobilisation becomes the primary means to settle disputes. In that case, it's really no more than street brawls. Once begun by one side, there is a tendency to become mutually escalating if the other side finds that reason doesn't work and so must resort too to the same tactics. Eventually, the stronger side wins, not the better arguments.

How does one combat this? By reason? By laying out facts? Don't be naïve. If people are of a mind to think through issues, there won't be the spectre of identity mobilisation and mass street brawls in the first place. That this strategy works in cause after cause, tells us that most humans respond to the emotive more than the rational.

If a society wants to be rid of the risk of being torn asunder by identity mobilisation, it has to do something about identity and mobilisation in the first place.

Let me take mobilisation first. It reminds us of a perennial dilemma of free societies. How much freedom do we give to people who would use that freedom to deny others' freedom? How much say do we give to those who would disenfranchise others? At what point should the state step in and say: You cannot say this; you cannot mobilise thus; your ends are incompatible with social peace, freedom and equality?

I think most people will accept that somewhere a line has to be drawn. This AWARE saga should set us thinking long and hard where that line ought to be.

Note how the words "sexual orientation" and "sexuality" were put in quotation marks in Josie Lau's letter when there was really no typographical need to. By doing so, she signalled that she considered these concepts invented, unreal and illegitimate. A figment of other people's imagination.

We should also do something about identity, for identity mobilisation is only effective when identity boundaries are clear. That is why perhaps the best antidote to ethnic tension is simply to get people to mix with others of a different ethnic group at school, at work and in the same neighbourhoods. When fear is understood to be baseless and stereotypes proven to be lies, shrill calls to communal defence by extremists fall on deaf ears.

Ditto with the fear of homosexuality. As more and more straight people get to know gay people, as more and more it is considered just and correct to treat everybody fairly regardless of sexual orientation, the "threat" of homosexuality will be seen as so much fanatical imaginings.

Hence, for the extremist rightwing, the message of tolerance itself is intolerable. Tolerance and neutrality renders impotent the strategy of identity mobilisation.

And that's why you see Thio and gang on the offensive against AWARE's programs. Speaking of homosexual orientation in a neutral, non-judgemental way is considered the same as "promoting homosexuality". If you're not with us, you're against us.

What this means is that, if we don't want to see this kind of identity mobilisation tear society apart over the question of homosexuality, the solution is not to freeze, stand still and move no further forward on the question of gay equality, but the opposite: To move faster. To blur the distinction and value differential between gay and straight. So that scary bogeymen conjured by fanatical minds are not believed but laughed away. And fanatics seen for what they are: the real threat.

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