A Legal Guidebook for LGBT Couples & Families in Singapore
In Singapore, the law that criminalises sex between men, section 377A of the Penal Code, remains on the books as a “sign of societal disapproval”, despite being challenged in the Court of Appeal. Despite this, the Lesbian Gay Bisexual Transgender (LGBT) community is increasingly coming out of the closet, and are living ordinary (but legally unrecognised) lives with their partners and sometimes their children. In the present climate, it is even more important for the LGBT community to know how and why existing community law applies to their families, and be empowered with the information to protect themselves under the law.
While pro-bono clinics exist and there are even guidebooks for the average person, the needs of the LGBT community are unique and may not be addressed by these avenues. Most LGBT families either do not know any LGBT-friendly (and knowledgeable) lawyers to address their concerns, or cannot afford to seek legal advice for even basic queries.
This guidebook aims to fill this lacuna for LGBT families, by answering questions that come up frequently. Written by a team of lawyers in Singapore, this book does not aim to replace legal advice and work rendered by practicing lawyers, but simply provide a starting point that will empower the reader to take the necessary steps themselves where possible, and seek more detailed advice and legal help where necessary.
Click below to download the free e-book.
If you are looking for a printed version, please click here to order from our webshop, or check the list of our non-profit community partners where you may pick up or browse a copy for free. If you are a non-profit entity looking to get copies of the book, please contact us here.
Another Pink Dot is just around the corner. The annual protest is into its 13th year and while the visibility of the LGBT community has increased over the years, very little has shifted on the legal front. In March, a high court judge dismissed three challenges to Section 377A of the penal code. He said that Section 377A “serves the purpose of safeguarding public morality by showing societal moral disapproval of male homosexual acts”. Echoing the high court’s ruling, the Attorney-General’s Chambers maintained that Section 377A serves a “legitimate and reasonable” state interest, “regardless of whether and how it is enforced”. Despite the assurances of non-enforcement of Section 377A, Singapore remains rife with discrimination against the LGBT community, demonstrably according to the UPR Report filed this year.
Just this year alone, we saw a pride flag being ripped from the countertop of a local eatery and a transgender student share her tramatic experience with the Ministry of Education. Singapore is and will probably remain a difficult and challenging environment for LGBT people but Queer lives must go on.
As we announced last year, we ran a survey on LGBT Families and Couples in Singapore (“LGBT Families”), in order to find out people’s level of awareness of the guidebook and to what extent they have used the guidebook. For the first time ever in Singapore, the survey also polled people to find out what stages they are in their relationship, in relation to proactively creating legal protections for their relationship.
We are proud to present the results of this survey report and we hope that the community will not only use the results as food for thought but also use the data to act on existing relationships that they might have.
Legal protections for LGBT families is one of the many objectives of the LGBT movement, and this survey report takes a measure of this particularly key pillar. We enclose both the Executive Summary and the Survey Report (full) for download but we want to highlight the key findings.
We are passionate about bridging the access gap of information and empowering LGBT families to help themselves. Our resources are available online for free but are only as useful as their reach to the people who need them. Please help us spread the word so that as this information will reach as many people as possible
Follow us on Facebook or join our Mailing list to stay updated with what we do.
If you are a donor, please note that there is no expense report associated with this survey report as we have only used freely available resources and volunteered time.
The road to equality for the Singaporean LGBT community remains long and hard but Martin Luther King Jr. reminds us that the moral arc of the universe is long, but it always bends towards justice.
It has been three eventful years since we published Same but Different. The High Court of Singapore allowed a gay Singaporean to adopt his son that he fathered through a surrogate, a trans lesbian couple saw their marriage invalidated unilaterally when they tried claiming their HDB flat, and a constitutional challenge against s377A was denied, again.
Some things have changed but most have stayed the same. As we consider how to move forward with our project, we would like to take the pulse on the current state and needs of the community.
We would like to get quantitative data about the legal arrangements LGBT couples in Singapore have entered into, the difficulties faced while doing so, and why they may or may not intend to take steps to protect themselves in the future.
The results of this survey will help us make a data-driven decision on what the community really needs and where our efforts and attention should be focused on. Due to the narrow focus of this survey, it is aimed at LGBT couples and families in long-term relationships.
We would be grateful if people were to help us publicise this survey to as many eligible participants as possible, for the widest sample size.
FAQ:
This casenote is written by Viknesh Pillay, one of the lawyers who contributed to “Same but Different”. Viknesh is a triple-qualified lawyer currently in private practice and specialises in Maritime Law. He has keen interest in LGBT and human rights issues in Singapore and in the region. Viknesh ran a support group for racial minorities within the gay community with The Purple Alliance and focused his LLB thesis on Child Trafficking in Cambodia. He is also currently a legal advisor with The Purple Alliance.
Introduction
Hello donors,
Statement of Accounts
We apologise for how long this report has taken from our launch, but we had to wait till all the expenses relating to the printing of the book and the dispensing of rewards to donors were all in.
Total Money Raised vs Expenses (SGD)
Total Money Raised (online and offline) | 32475.20 | |
Total Expenses | 13475.93 | |
Balance | 18999.27 |
Expense Distribution
Of the SGD13475.93 spent, the expense ratio is as shown below.
As shown, we have not spent a majority of the money raised, as we have been very careful in the use thereof. The remainder will be saved for the
Future of the Project
The team is currently taking a break after the launch and subsequent events. Our current focus is to also promote Same but Different and extend our reach to as many people in the community as possible.
After a suitable break, we aim to start work to publish a second book on LGBT-related law in the next 3 years. The focus of the book is still under discussion, and we will take feedback from the community and community organisations for this. We will also assess how much resources we have to deliver the intended content.
If for any reason we do not proceed with any further books or projects, the trustees are empowered to dissolve the trust and direct the funds to non-profit LGBT organisations in Singapore.
Donor Rewards
For those who emailed us with their donation confirmation before 15 May 2017, we trust that you have received your rewards, where applicable. If not, please contact us. For those who did not, we regret that we are not in a position to dispense your rewards anymore.
If you received an email via giveasia, this will be the our last update through GIVE.Asia. In the future, all updates will be through our Facebook page or if you have given us your details as donors, you will be put on our donor mailing list. So please do like our Facebook page to receive future updates:
https://www.facebook.com/singaporelgbtlaw/
Personal Data Protection
As promised we will be deleting all information, including emails and donation confirmations you have sent us from our email servers and records once your rewards have been dispatched. We will only retain your name and email address for the purpose of further communication with you on this project in a separate mailing list accessible only to the Project Leader (currently, Indulekshmi Rajeswari) and Marketing & Fundraising (currently, Nicholas Deroose). If you do not wish for your name or email to be retained, kindly let us know (hello@singaporelgbtlaw.com) and we will delete your records.
In the future, we may roll out projects with special rewards for our donors. In those situations, we will require that you present us with the donation confirmation email again, if needed, as we will no longer retain the records to verify your donor status on our end. We are aware this will present an inconvenience for you, but we do so in order to protect the integrity of your personal data.
As such, we suggest that you save the donation confirmation in a place where you can find it again easily, for future purposes. For our donors who have made bank transfers or sent cheques, we will send you an email from our end confirming receipt of your donation
Thank you everyone for your support thus far.
We are proud to publish the “Same but Different: A Legal Guidebook for LGBT Couples & Families in Singapore”, after our successful fundraising and with the support of the community.
In Singapore, the law that criminalises sex between men, section 377A of the Penal Code, remains on the books as a “sign of societal disapproval”, despite being challenged in the Court of Appeal. Despite this, the Lesbian Gay Bisexual Transgender (LGBT) community is increasingly coming out of the closet, and are living ordinary (but legally unrecognised) lives with their partners and sometimes their children. In the present climate, it is even more important for the LGBT community to know how and why existing community law applies to their families, and be empowered with the information to protect themselves under the law.
While pro-bono clinics exist and there are even guidebooks for the average person, the needs of the LGBT community are unique and may not be addressed by these avenues. Most LGBT families either do not know any LGBT-friendly (and knowledgeable) lawyers to address their concerns, or cannot afford to seek legal advice for even basic queries.
This guidebook aims to fill this lacuna for LGBT families, by answering questions that come up frequently. Written by a team of lawyers in Singapore, this book does not aim to replace legal advice and work rendered by practicing lawyers, but simply provide a starting point that will empower the reader to take the necessary steps themselves where possible, and seek more detailed advice and legal help where necessary.
You can download the free e-book here.
Printed copies are generally made available through our non-profit community partners for free to members of the public. We only directly sell printed copies of the book in bulk in sets of 5, to other entities (including libraries and educational institutions), which do not qualify as non-profit entities. However, if you are an educational institution or library who wants to get less than 5 copies, please contact us directly. We are only able to ship the product to locations in Singapore. We recommend that buyers outside Singapore use package forwarders.
If you are a non-profit entity looking to get copies of the book, please contact us here.
Published 18 April 2017
Hello donors,
The Singapore LGBT legal guide team has been hard at work making final edits to the guide and planning the distribution. We are also working on planning a launch event!
In the meantime, we would like to give you an update on the following matters:
Published on 3 March 2017
We have crossed our second goal of SGD15,000!
We are so humbled by the support from LGBT people and allies all over, and overwhelmed with gratitude.
We will continuing on our present trajectory of editing and finalising the book for print and e-book release. We are aiming to release both versions by June.
Just a reminder to the donors who have donated over SGD 50, SGD100 or SGD 500, if you wish to claim your rewards, please forward your GIVEasia confirmation email to hello@singaporelgbtlaw.com. Do provide us with your name and address for those that are eligible to receive a copy of the printed books.
In the coming months, we will be contacting you through email on how you can claim your reward.
We have received queries on how the print book will be distributed. This is an important question, and our first and foremost priority is to ensure that this is done in a way that serves the community.
Initially we started with a plan of printing 1000 copies and distributing it to local LGBT and LGBT-friendly organisations. However, now that we are able to print 2000 copies, we will give more copies to those organisations and expand our list. We are also currently looking at working with legal service providers and social welfare organisations who might deal with LGBT people. We hope that libraries (especially law libraries) will be on the list. As this is a novel project, we are in the our early days of understanding who will wish to work with us, so we will require some time to compile this list.
If you are interested in working with us on this aspect, or know someone/some organisation who may be interested in working with us, please feel free to contact us at hello@singaporelgbtlaw.com
We will be working with community organisations to do outreach events in order to extend the reach of this guide. This could take the form of talks or workshops with interested audiences or training sessions with volunteers/staff of LGBT/LGBT-friendly organisations. Some of the funding and print copies may be used for this purpose.
If you’d be interested in having us speak at your events, please contact us at hello@singaporelgbtlaw.com
To stay updated on upcoming events, please like and follow our Facebook page, or visit our website
We have also been working to compile a list of LGBT-friendly practicing lawyers, who will be able to assist LGBT couples and families further. Once we have compiled this list, we will put it on our website along with the guidebook.
While we have met our goal, we will leave the campaign up for continued donations. We will invest any excess after printing and planned expenses into outreach events or for future editions of the book.
To ensure accountability and transparency, the trustees will be releasing updates on our expenditure of funds once the guide goes to print.
Once again, thank you everyone who has supported us so far and we will be working to realize Singapore’s first ever LGBT legal guide.
As always, you can stay tuned to our campaign page, Facebook page and blog for updates.
Website: www.singaporelgbtlaw.com
Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/singaporelgbtlaw/
Campaign page:
https://give.asia/movement/same_difference_legal_guidebook_for_lgbt_couples_and_families
2 March 2017
This is the power of community.
In the short 24hrs that our crowdfunding campaign has gone live, we have managed to reach our target goal of SGD10,000.
This has only been made possible because of the generosity and trust that the community has placed in us and we are moved and humbled by this outpouring of support.
A big thank you to everyone who has donated so far.
Just a reminder to the donors who have donated over SGD 50, SGD100 or SGD 500, if you wish to claim your rewards, please forward your GIVEasia confirmation email to hello@singaporelgbtlaw.com. Without the email, we are not able to get in touch with you.
Dreaming big
We want to reach as many people as possible with this guide. We started with a modest vision of 1000 copies and $10,000 as we did not know how people would respond to this project. Your response has convinced us that we can dream bigger and extend the reach of the project to more people. We believe that the more people have the information in this guide, the better.
Moving forward, we have had a discussion with the trustees and have decided to continue the crowdfunding campaign with a new goal of SGD15,000.
The additional SGD5,000 that we raise will go to a few things:
Every dollar you donate will go towards ensuring that the guide reaches as many people as possible.
We hope to continue to have the support of the community through this endeavor. The trustees will be releasing updates on the expenditure after the printing of the book is done, to ensure transparency and accountability.
We will be posting updates here on our Facebook page so if you haven’t liked and followed our page yet please do! And don’t forget to spread the word!
We can do this!
From setting up a safe space for queer women in Singapore to challenging section 377a of the penal code, Indulekshmi Rajeswari is a well-known LGBT activist and does not shy away from controversy.
In her latest venture, she is the project lead for Same but Different: Legal Guidebook for LGBT Couples & Families in Singapore a book that provides guidance on legal questions that LGBT couples and families encounter frequently.
Indu, tell us a bit about yourself and how you got into activism.
I came to Singapore when I was 10 with my family and I have been here ever since. I came out to myself as bisexual around 17 or so.
Some time after I came out as bisexual, I was exploring the LGBTQ space in Singapore, and I came across SIGNEL, an old-school mailing list. Somewhere at the end of 2005, a gay man (whom I later learned had mental health problems) posted very lesbianophobic comments on the mailing list. I did not know that he had mental health problems at the time, so I and many other queer women responded to his comments vociferously.
Jean Chong, who was one of the posters on the mailing list, contacted the women who had responded, and brought us together for a dinner. In the course of our meetings, we decided that we wanted to set up a safe space for queer women. That discussion led to the founding of Sayoni. While we understood the original poster had mental health problems, we were rather incensed that the moderators of the group felt it was okay to let such comments through without thought to how it would affect the women in the group.
Thus began my foray into LGBT activism. I was active with Sayoni for many years, doing both advocacy and community-building work, for about 5-6 years. I also pioneered the Sayoni Survey during this time along with the other women in Sayoni. I also organised some Indignation events in this time – a forum on bisexuality, and another one that attempted to discuss and bridge the divide between queer men and queer women.
I started law school in my second year of work with Sayoni. In my last year of law school, I was offered the opportunity to work with Mr M Ravi on his constitutional challenge against s 377A of the Penal Code, with Tan Eng Hong as the applicant. What we did not expect was that the case would get sidetracked into a procedural question about the standing of the Tan Eng Hong to challenge the law. By the time this challenge came to the Court of Appeal, I had already graduated and was working on getting qualified as a lawyer, and was assisting Mr Ravi as an intern for the Court of Appeal part.
It was a few months after I began practice that the judgment for this case came out. I made a decision then, after this judgment to work with Mr Peter Low and Choo Zheng Xi, to represent Gary & Kenneth to file a fresh challenge against the constitutionality of the s377A. I did not stay on to assist SC Deborah Barker for the Court of Appeal phase for various reasons. Years of activism had completely burned me out emotionally and otherwise by 2013, so I took a break for 2 years to focus on myself, my career and my personal life.
Since late 2015, I have been working on this guide.
So what made you want to write this guide?
I frequently had my friends ask me questions about the law and their relationship, questions I often could not answer immediately because I had not done the research. As opposed to what most people might think, lawyers do not graduate with a complete library of laws in their head. Many questions do not have immediate answers, and often research must be done. I was aware that there were guidebooks published in other countries to help the LGBT community. I was also aware that Law Society and other publishers had written guidebooks for the general audience in relation to the law.
“What this guide is meant to do, is to bridge the gap between LGBT people and access to legal information”
I knew my friends were asking me because they did not know other LGBT-friendly lawyers. Which, I also knew, was another barrier to access to justice, as people would be too afraid to approach lawyers to ask for advice because they were afraid of being discriminated against. And then there was the flip side – I knew many LGBT lawyers but they were either not out, or were specialised in fields other than community law. If you wanted to find a LGBT-friendly lawyer to even ask basic questions, you had to know someone who might have a contact.
So I had the idea to do this in 2011, after I was out of law school. I even attempted to bring together a team to do this, but for various reasons, it never took off, so it remained buried for a while. In the meantime, while I was working in a small firm at the start of my career, I would help LGBT clients through my firm on an ad-hoc basis, and sometimes through informal advice. Pro bono work is very important to me, so I also used to volunteer with the Legal Aid Bureau and Community Legal Clinics. I strongly believe that lawyers, where possible should try to give back to the society within their capabilities.
Around late 2015, I left the big firm I was working in and I had finished some professional exams which had taken about 2 years to complete. I finally had the time to continue LGBT activism, but I wanted to do it on my terms. The earlier project which I had buried came to mind, and I decided it was time to do it. This time, I had more experience, more contacts and more time to focus on this. Also, in 2015, I had just gotten married to my husband, which made me acutely aware of the privilege we possessed as a heterosexual couple. I wanted to do something to help LGBT couples struggling with the lack of legal recognition that we had so easily. I also knew I was also going to leave practice, and could no longer advice people on an ad-hoc basis as I did before.
So I put together a new team with a vision: a legal guidebook to answer the questions that LGBT couples would have with respect to the legal aspects of their relationship, written in a layman-friendly manner. The guide would be researched and written by relatively junior lawyers and law students, and I would get senior Community Law practitioners to check the veracity of all the information in the guide. Why I felt I had to do it in this manner is because I was aware that most senior practitioners either had no time or interest to do this guide themselves.
You mentioned that you are recently married. How did you meet your partner?
For about two years after I broke up with my ex-girlfriend, I was single, and dating quite a bit. To broaden my horizons, I signed up Okcupid, a dating site. I met up with a lot of people but none of them really worked out beyond a few dates.
In early 2013, my to-be husband in Munich, unsatisfied with the matches in his area, did a global search on Okcupid based on compatibility, and found my profile with 99% compatibility. We started talking but were just friends. Around that time, I I decided to plan a trip to Europe in summer to visit the continent for the first time. I planned to start the trip in Munich so that he would be able to show me around there. I even invited two of my friends in Sweden to visit me in Munich.
I landed in Munich and spent three amazing days with him (and my friends), in which it was clear that something special was happening. At the end of my time in Munich, I was almost prepared not to get on the train to Zurich and stay on in Munich, but he told me that I should go on with my holiday, because he would join me when I got to Paris. He bought a plane ticket for someone he knew for barely 3 days, which was probably the best decision in his life aside from deciding to message me. We spent 5 amazing days together in Paris. In this time, it was clear to me that he was a keeper, and that we had something amazing together.
After we both went back, it was not possible for us to simply move on as if it were a holiday fling, and we decided to start a long-distance relationship. Two years and many flights later, I married the love of my life in 2015.
(Editor’s note: Awww)
What were some of the challenges you faced in your relationship with your partner?
Being an interracial transnational couple, our lives have been consistently bound up with issues of distance, language and most importantly, legal and immigration issues. I have been to the Germany Embassy so many times, I think I should get frequent flyer points for it. Even getting married was difficult, because German law made it nearly impossible (or just really bureaucratically difficult) for me as an Indian citizen to marry him. Ironically, a female friend of mine who was marrying a German woman had a much easier time than us because she happened to be Singaporean. We ended up getting married in Denmark. Legal difficulties, bureaucracy and jumping through the hoops is not new to us, even as a heterosexual couple. We are also not eligible for an HDB flat, since he is a foreigner and I am a PR, so that was not even in the cards from day one.
How does he view your activism? I ask this because most Singaporeans associate activism with “trouble making”.
My husband has always been incredibly supportive of me and my work in the LGBT community, and I am very grateful for that. Where he comes from, homosexuality is not such a big deal and he is often astounded at all the layers of discrimination that exists here in Singapore. The German culture greatly values constitutional freedoms and individual liberties. For him, the fact that I was an activist meant that we had more in common than not, and that we both greatly cared about civil liberties. He also does grassroots work for a leftist party in Germany, so what I did was not strange to him at all. We were both achieving our vision for the world in different ways – him in politics and I in civil society.
When we met I was actually working on the s377A case. When I returned from my break and wanted to do this guide, he has been nothing but supportive and encouraging. He is the one person I trust implicitly and he has often been a good sounding board for many ideas during this project.
What do you hope that this guide will achieve?
This book does not contain any secrets, and neither does it provide any magical legal loopholes. The information we provide can be obtained from anyone researching the topic using publicly available resources. What this guide is meant to do, is to bridge the gap between LGBT people and access to legal information. There are many barriers within the law for LGBT people and information is power. While the book cannot replace lawyers, it is a starting point for people so that they would then have the information necessary to approach a lawyer if necessary, or take steps themselves. This to me, is the first immediate legal goal – to empower people.
Then there is the psychological goal. Lack of information and support mean that LGBT couples often linger within a limbo of never taking the next step in their relationship or life. I know a lot of LGBT couples who have been together for years but never even move in together or try to start a life together, because the impetus or incentive is not there. Since they are not able to get married, some of them do not even see themselves as a family. They do not even contemplate having children, because they know it is too hard (and it is indeed difficult, but not impossible). Hence, the legal barriers have psychological ramifications. I want to give people hope that, even though the legal recognition is not there, there are steps that can be taken to protect yourself under the law, and that it is possible to be a family despite not being married or heterosexual. I want people to see themselves in their relationships as families (despite how the government defines family) and ask to be recognised as such.
My final advocacy goal is that I want people to push the boundaries of the law with the information they find in this book. I hope that the law will be challenged by couples and families seeking certain outcomes, on multiple fronts. If we want rights, we have to demand it, push for it, challenge the authorities for it – not merely sit back and wait for it to be handed to us.
Do you believe that Singapore will one day abolish section 377A? If so, when? If not, why?
I think eventually they will get their act together and abolish it, especially if the rest of the world is ahead of us. However, the question is “when” – is it going to happen in my generation? My children’s generation? In any case, I prefer to think even longer-term and ask when they are going to bring in marriage equality, and anti-discrimination legislation. I dream big.
What gives you hope?
Taiwan is considering same-sex marriage! There is a tiny bit of ray of hope there, but other than that, hope in general has been hard to come by in 2016. Rather, I am fueled by a lot of hardened resolve. I have written about this before, that globally, we are witnessing a swing back to authoritarian and right-wing tendencies, and that progressives will have a hard time for the next few decades. I derive my resolve from the fact that there is actually no choice but to fight back against the forces of conservatism and oppression, because people’s lives depend on it. I want to be able to tell my grandchildren that I did not stand idly by while the forces of oppression ruined people’s lives.
But to end on a slightly hopeful note, I want to note that my marriage to my husband would have been illegal and unthinkable a few generations ago. If we had been born during the time of Hitler, for example, both or either of us would have been imprisoned or worse. That is not the case anymore, and I want LGBT people to have the protections we have now.
Anymore comments or thoughts?
While this guide is confined to LGBT Couples & Families, I am also keenly aware that the law impacts LGBT people as individuals. However, having very limited resources, I set the scope of this book to be for LGBT Couples & Families in order to keep the project manageable. It is my hope that this book will inspire someone else to do one for LGBT individuals, or that we will eventually have the resources to do one ourselves.
If you would like to donate to get Singapore’s first LGBT legal guide printed please visit the crowdfunding site on GIVEasia at this link:
https://give.asia/movement/same_difference_legal_guidebook_for_lgbt_couples_and_families
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Are you a legal practitioner or legal service provider who is interested in being listed here? If so, please Contact Us.
Advocate & Solicitor in the Supreme Court of Singapore (2008)
Advocate And Solicitor, Singapore
LL.B (Hons), National University of Singapore
LL.M, New York University
Advocate & Solicitor, Supreme Court of Singapore (2011)
Advocate & Solicitor, Supreme Court of Singapore
Advocate & Solicitor in the Supreme Court of Singapore (1984)
Advocate & Solicitor in the Supreme Court of Singapore (1979)
LLB (Hons), National University of Singapore, 1977
Advocate & Solicitor, Supreme Court of Singapore (1980)
Advocate & Solicitor in the Supreme Court of Singapore
LLB, University of Leeds
Advocate & Solicitor, Singapore
National University of Singapore, LLB (Hons)
National University of Singapore, LLM (1996)
Advocate & Solicitor of the Supreme Court of Singapore (1997)
Advocate & Solicitor, Supreme Court of Singapore (2009)
Advocate & Solicitor in the Supreme Court of Singapore (2001)
National University of Singapore
Advocate & Solicitor, Supreme Court of Singapore (2014)
Advocate & Solicitor in the Supreme Court of Singapore (2015)