Incident of anti-LGBTQ content under probe

The police are investigating an incident at Hwa Chong Institution (HCI) in which a school counsellor giving a sex education talk used content that discriminated against lesbian, gay, bisexual, transgender and queer (LGBTQ) people.

They confirmed yesterday they were following up on reports that were made, without giving any details of who had made them, or what laws may have been broken.

The content of the counsellor's presentation was not approved by the school. He has been reprimanded and suspended from conducting lessons on sexuality.

In his presentation on July 13 to Secondary 4 students, he made unsubstantiated claims such as how a majority of homosexuals have problems with intestinal worms and how a large proportion are paedophiles.

In March, Minister for Home Affairs and Law K. Shanmugam had reiterated in Parliament that there were protections for LGBTQ people under the law.

He said the Government had expressly included in amendments to the Maintenance of Religious Harmony Act (MRHA) that any attack on any member of the LGBTQ community because of his or her identity, or on LGBTQ groups, would be an offence, and would not be tolerated.

The amendments to the MRHA state that it is an offence to urge violence on the grounds of religion or incite feelings of enmity against a target group.

An explanatory statement to the MRHA notes that a target group may also be "made up of atheists, individuals from a specific racial community, who share a similar sexual orientation or have a certain nationality or descent like foreign workers or new citizens".

Though the amendments to the Act were passed in October 2019, they have yet to come into force.

A spokesman for the Ministry of Home Affairs (MHA) said the delay was due to the ministry developing and testing reporting systems and training officers on how the law would work operationally.

Since the legislation will also affect a large number of religious organisations, MHA is working to ensure that all the organisations are informed of the obligations before bringing it into force, he added.

He said: "On protections for LGBTQ persons, the Government has made its position clear - violence, abuse or harassment against any person is not condoned regardless of their sexual orientation or religious beliefs."

He noted that acts involving hurt or incitement of violence, including against LGBTQ persons, are also offences under the Penal Code and the Protection from Harassment Act (Poha), which contains both civil and criminal measures to protect individuals from harassment and abuse.

Singapore Management University law don Eugene Tan said that depending on the precise facts of the incident, one potential offence that the police could investigate is under Section 4 of Poha, of causing harassment, alarm or distress to a person through the counsellor's presentation. This can include an LGBTQ person who might have been in the audience.

Associate Professor Tan noted, however, that though the counsellor's actions appear to have been uncalled for and potentially promoted hatred or disgust towards LGBTQ people, not all bigoted acts have to be dealt with by way of criminal sanctions.

He said: "The larger issue is not so much whether the acts broke the law but how best to engage the counsellor on the error of his ways and to ensure that such discriminatory acts do not happen. This is necessary as the counsellor works with impressionable teenagers."