The Future of Homosexuality in Singapore

The greatest impediment to the achievement of absolute gay equality in Singapore is the rampant spread of HIV infection amongst Men who have Sex with Men (MSM). The Ministry of Health is contemplating measures to curb this exponential increase. Activists from Action for AIDS have drawn up guidelines for safe sex in saunas which they published in August 2004. They are also working strenuously to educate the gay community in particular and Singaporean society in general about the ABCs of HIV control. These measures have been tacitly ratified by the Ministry of Health although the latter itself appears not to want to be seen to be the originator of these efforts due to the criminalisation of homosexual sex in Singapore and the alleged existence of a conservative majority. This sensible approach, instead of a harsh clampdown on gay saunas, would avoid stifling a considerable portion of the creative economy.

Looking beyond the immediate AIDS crisis, it is probable that with the intensive international efforts at developing a HIV vaccine and the discovery that existing drugs like valproic acid [11]are able to wipe out latent reservoirs of HIV infection, a cure for AIDS will be found before the decade is out. This would remove the raison d'être for the current conservative backlash and the liberalisation that was witnessed in the years prior to 2004 would in all likelihood resume its normal course.

Beyond that, advances in genetic engineering will soon make it possible for homosexuals to reproduce themselves in a true biological sense, by the recombination of haploid chromosomal complements from both fathers or both mothers (the latter already achieved in mice) to produce a child with the characteristics of both parents, and not merely via adoption or cloning. It will then be possible to create a self-sustaining gay civilisation in Singapore where every citizen completely enjoys equal rights.

Peering even further into the future, Ray Kurzweil, the acclaimed 'restless genius' (Wall Street Journal) and inventor of the most innovative and compelling technology of our era like the Kurzweil Reading Machine, the Kurzweil synthesizer and advanced speech recognition, predicted in his book "The Age of Spiritual Machines: When Computers Exceed Human Intelligence" [12] and his most recent acclaimed work "The Singularity Is Near : When Humans Transcend Biology" [13] that by 2020, computers will exceed the processing capability of the human brain. When this happens, robots will be intelligent enough to replicate themselves without human intervention and perpetuate ever-improving generations of their own kind. Life will no longer be the preserve of organic chemistry. Silicon or other forms of inorganic life will become a reality. Sexual or even biological reproduction will be an option and not an imperative. When the concept of life on Earth itself changes forever, questions such as the morality of homosexuality or of homosexual reproduction will be as passé as the phonograph record in the age of HVD (holographic versatile disc).