Be AWARE That Anti-Homosexuality is Taking Away a Woman’s Right
Unless you’ve been living under the ground, digging for dragon eggs in Singapore, I’m sure you have heard of the situation about AWARE Singapore. If you have not, let me help by explaining what is AWARE and what has been going on.
AWARE is a not-for-profit, non-government 25-year-old organization in Singapore by women, for women which has a vision of improving the quality of life of women in Singapore by promoting equality. A couple of months before AWARE’s AGM held in March, there was a suddenly rise in membership and out of the 100 odd members that attended the AGM, about 80 were actually new members. No surprise at what came next. 9 out of 12 of the executive committee (EXCO) places went to the new members, including the position of the president of AWARE.
True enough to speculation, the new president, Josie Lau and the new EXCO came out in the open and admitted that it was an orchestrated move to takeover the old EXCO of AWARE and the reasoning given is that the old EXCO has turned AWARE into a pro-homosexual organization and the new EXCO wants to correct that in god’s name and bring AWARE back to it’s roots. (Correct me if I am wrong about this.)
I can be sure enough to say that many people, including Christians, disagree with what the new EXCO is doing. Bringing religion into a secular organization like AWARE and telling everyone that the takeover was because the old EXCO did pro-homosexuality things like bringing it up during sexual education in schools, screened a ‘lesbian film’ and invited homosexual people to share during speeches. Being homosexual is just the way it is. The gay kids won’t turn any less gay if he/she doesn’t take part in the sexual educations, watched the film or listen to the homosexual people speak. In fact, learning to embrace homosexuality at a younger age will lower sexual discrimination and reduce confusion.
AWARE is an organization by WOMEN, for WOMEN which has a vision of improving the quality of life of WOMEN in Singapore by promoting EQUALITY. Now which part of part of the vision resonates with its new members bringing religion into play and claiming that homosexuality is wrong. Are homosexual women not women? Are homosexual women not deserving of equality? The agenda of anti-homosexuality can very well be carried out if these Christians set up an organization of their own. But no, they had to take over a secular 25-year-old women’s rights organization and claim their actions to be in god’s name.
These women bring Christians a bad name in my humble opinion.
Saying all that, I am just a straight man living in this world and if you are a Singaporean woman and you value WOMEN’S rights which is what the real AWARE should be all about, go involve yourself in their Extraordinary General Meeting (EOGM) on 2 May, Saturday where you can have a chance to make your voice count. Details can be found here.
[Image by ehoyer]
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