Singapore to purge gay-themed books

Sunday, July 13, 2014

SINGAPORE -- A children's book inspired by a real-life story of two male penguins raising a baby chick in New York's zoo has been deemed inappropriate by state-run Singapore libraries, and the conservative city-state's information minister said he supports the decision to destroy all copies alongside two other titles.

The National Library Board, which runs 26 public libraries in Singapore, pulled from the shelves and said it would "pulp" the copies of three titles, citing complaints their content goes against Singapore's family values.

The books are And Tango Makes Three, about a male-male penguin couple in the Central Park Zoo; The White Swan Express: A Story About Adoption, which involves a lesbian couple; and Who's In My Family: All About Our Families.

"The prevailing norms, which the overwhelming majority of Singaporeans accept, support teaching children about conventional families, but not about alternative, nontraditional families, which is what the books in question are about," Yaacob Ibrahim, minister of communications and information, said Friday.

He added: "Societies are never static, and will change over time. But NLB's approach is to reflect existing social norms, and not to challenge or seek to change them."

The decision triggered an online petition and an open letter to spare the books with thousands of signatures collected. Some are calling for a boycott of the libraries and their events.

Donald Low, author of Hard Choices: Challenging the Singapore Consensus, a book recommending policy changes in the tightly controlled Southeast Asian state, said he had pulled out of the Singapore Writers' Festival in November to protest the decision.

He objected to the communications minister's comments, saying that "attitudes are more complex and nuanced than the reductionist view the minister has taken."

"I've always believed that Singapore society is generally tolerant, open and relaxed about people whose sexual orientations are different from ours -- even if we don't agree with them," Low said.

A Section on 07/13/2014