SINGAPORE — Pink Dot SG, Singapore’s gay rights movement, has launched a campaign to promote sexual tolerance ahead of an event it is holding next month in the conservative city state, reports GayAsiaNews.com.
Mumbrella.asia first reported the launch of a short film featuring people talking about their sexuality and what “freedom to love” means to them.
The movement has proved controversial, with Singapore’s Minister for Families and Social Development Chan Chun Sing publicly reprimanding the US bank Goldman Sachs for creating “division” with its pro-gay policies by giving the local LGBT community better employment opportunities.
Other sponsors of Pink Dot SG include Google, Barclays, JP Morgan, Cooper Vision, Parkroyal on Pickering and audio branding agency The Gunnery.
Pink Dot SG is an annual, non-profit movement, free-for-all event which started in 2009, in support of the LGBT community in Singapore where same-sex relations are illegal.
Pink Dot remains a milestone for the local LGBT movement because it is Singapore’s only legal way to allow community members to celebrate who they are.
Singapore retains a British colonial-era “Section 377A” law that criminalizes sex between men with imprisonment for a term which may extend to two years.
There have been various calls for Section 377A to be repealed in recent years and the issue of repealing or retaining it has also been brought up in Parliament in recent years.
Prime Minister Lee Hsien Loong has repeatedly stressed that the government doesn’t discriminate against LGBT residents – though it declined to repeal the law banning sex between men.
