The Reporter: Worldwide church raises "insurmountable' issues (June 19)

Worldwide church raises 'insurmountable' issues

Yap Kim Hao, Jun 19, 2008

Yap Kim Hao
By Yap Kim Hao
Special Contributor

It was a revealing experience for me to be in Fort Worth as a visitor at the United Methodist 2008 General Conference. I participated for the first time as an elected delegate from the Methodist Church in Malaysia and Singapore in the General Conference in 1964. I attended as the first Asian bishop of the affiliated autonomous Methodist Church of Malaysia and Singapore until I resigned from the term episcopacy in 1973 to serve for 12 years as the General Secretary of the Christian Conference of Asia, which brought together the Christian denominations within Asia—including Australia and New Zealand—for fellowship, witness and service.

What was new for me in 2008 was the issue of homosexuality. I joined in the Common Witness as a Soulforce and Reconciling Ministries Network volunteer. The Silent Witness at the plenary was a memorable and moving experience for me, and it showed the increasing maturity of the delegates of the United Methodist churches in the United States. Hopefully the delegates, especially those from the Central Conferences, may be inspired by such a witness.

Worldwide nature

What was old for me was the discussion on the worldwide nature of the United Methodist Church. I was an active participant in the '60s in the Methodist Board of Missions Asia Consultation followed by the Global Consultation in Green Lake, Wis., which brought together the other regional consultations in Africa and Latin America. It was sponsored by the Commission of the Structure of Methodism Overseas (COSMOS).

The significant outcome of that consultation was the wide support for the move toward the structure of affiliated autonomous Methodist Churches overseas. The move was implemented in the Methodist Churches throughout Latin America and of Asia, with the exception of the Philippines. Other Methodist churches in Asia, which were the result of the work of the missionary society of British Methodism, had followed its policy of setting up autonomous churches earlier.

Looking at this development from the Asian perspective, the countries in Asia that were colonies of the United Kingdom entered into the period of de-colonization. The rise of independent nation-states came about with the disintegration of the British Empire. (British Methodism had also set free the Methodist Churches in the American colonies after the War of Independence).

For political reasons, the Methodist Churches in Korea, Japan, China, Indonesia and Burma have had to cut off connections at times with the United Methodist Church in the U.S. Foreign connections were detrimental to the development of Christianity.

The forces of history brought about the autonomous Methodist Churches throughout Asia with the exception of the Philippines. We have developed new relationships with one another that went beyond our previously exclusive connections with London and New York. We recognize now that close neighbors are more meaningful than distant relations.

A Fellowship of Asian Methodist Bishops/Presidents has since evolved into the Asian Methodist Council. The council recognizes the sovereignty of each member and restricts itself to common issues of witness and service.

Regarding the current discussion of the United Methodist Church's worldwide nature, it is highly unlikely that the affiliated autonomous Methodist Churches will desire to be re-integrated into the denomination's General Conference structure. It is more likely that we will welcome the partnership with the United Methodist Church on specific issues and programs of witness and service that are mutually beneficial.

It will be a relationship of mutuality without the past dominance of American Methodism over the other former Central Conference churches, even though they may change their names to Regional Conferences.

In re-structuring the United Methodist Church, what would be acceptable to the present Philippines Central Conference as well as other affiliated autonomous churches in Asia? What is the formula for representation at General Conference? Can we develop a rationale for disproportionate representation?

Questions to consider

How do we measure the apportionment from the churches in the different Regional Conferences? What is the level of participation in the Episcopal Fund? How do we support the enlarged General Conference budget, which will require convening in different parts of the United Methodist Church around the world?

To me, it seems these are insurmountable questions that defy answers.

The reality is that we have a different world today. Methodism responded to the colonial and post-colonial period. But in this time of globalization, what does it mean to develop a worldwide nature of the church?

Those who command resources and power will continue to dominate others who have less. Is the United Methodist Church in a position to develop a more equitable connection and mutually beneficial relations? This will call for affirmation of diversities and a commitment to change from its privileged status. Is there a willingness to learn from other already established Methodist Churches and an openness to partner with one another on an equal basis in witness and service?

It seems to me that the time has passed for the Methodist Churches in Asia to come together under one governance of one General Conference, either in the projected United Methodist General Conference or the Asian region. General Conferences in each country in Asia will continue to exist and develop connections not only with the United Methodist Church but with other churches in pursuit of our common mission and service in the world.

The Rev Yap is a former bishop of the Methodist Church in Malaysia and Singapore.

ST: Debate on Homosexuality: It's not a big deal for most Singaporeans (Nov 3)

Nov 3, 2007
DEBATE ON HOMOSEXUALITY
It's not a big deal for most Singaporeans
By Andy Ho

IN THE recent debate over the decriminalisation of homosexual sodomy, Prime Minister Lee Hsien Loong observed, in passing, that HDB heartlanders weren't too concerned about the issue.

Mr Jeffrey Tan, a teaching fellow in the China division at the Nanyang Technological University (NTU), nuances the picture somewhat.

First, there is the Chinese intelligentsia here who are 'quite pro-gay', he said. These are the Nantah graduates and those who have gone to Taiwan or China to study, whose world views are coloured by their media and literature, which they continue to consume and which have become very libertarian in the 1990s in so far as same sex issues are concerned.

Secondly, there are non-cosmopolitan Chinese here who are non-confrontational when it comes to sexuality because their culture is suffused with Taoist and Buddhist values, wherein there is no concept of God or sin.

They would be like their compatriots in China and Taiwan, where 'most people do not find same sex attraction sinful or deserving of punishment, even when expressed physically', according to Dr Wu Cuncun who teaches at the University of New England in Australia.

Some might feel sad that a son or daughter might not grow up like 'other boys and girls', but the behaviour would not lead to disgust or them being disowned - unless someone deliberately set out to offend, she added.

Sexuality in traditional Chinese culture was regarded as part of life and not as something that spoke to some essence in one's personality. It did not define one's identity in society. That is, no one thought of a male who had sex with another as a homosexual - in the way Western activists push gay identity politics today, pitting
conservatives against liberals today.

Dr Wu said: 'In China, historically, homoeroticism had little to do with being conservative or liberal. Instead, standards of conduct were based on a world view encompassing the complementary forces of yin and yang.

'But yin and yang were never absolutely separate, so women and men fulfilled complementary roles and shared complementary places,' she added. Thus, there was no sense of sin if a man found another 'erotically attractive'. Such a male was just seen to be indulging in one possible form of sexuality.

Many emperors engaged in sex with both women and men, Dr Wu noted. Yet this guiltless relaxation towards same sex eroticism - famously depicted in Hongloumeng or Dream of the Red Chamber, one of the four great classics in pre-modern Chinese fiction - was largely something to be found within the upper classes. These dominated and used the
lower classes in the form of compliant bodies, male or female, for purposes both sexual and nonsexual.

Outside of the aristocracy and literati, for much of Chinese history, a man of commoner status was 'probably more likely to offend another man if he was incautious in approaching him with erotic intentions, and such a situation would usually be bereft of...romance', said Dr Mark Stevenson of Victoria University in Australia .

Yet, by the 19th century, more than any other time in Chinese history,in Beijing's world of theatre, at least, both young and old males from outside the scholar-official class, particularly merchants, were indulging in sex with young men quite openly.

Dr Stevenson thought that 'so many men felt unashamed about (this because there was) no Godhead in Chinese culture, so that the population as a whole was relatively free of hang-ups' around questions of sin in the forms that sexuality took.

Dr Wu agreed: 'In Chinese moral thought there is an absence of concern with God or sin.' Perhaps our immigrant forefathers brought with them this worldview which continues to animate the HDB heartlander.

In practice, everyone in the family knows about the homosexual son but no one talks about it. Mr Tan observed: 'In fact, it is the gays who are left behind to take care of ageing parents as their siblings get married and move out to start their own families.'

In such cases, it is 'very common in Singapore', Mr Tan said anecdotally, for gays to move in and stay with their boyfriends and their aged parents, who just accept the whole deal quietly.

This is reminiscent of Lee Ang's 1993 movie, The Wedding Banquet, in which a gay Chinese man who has a live-in white boyfriend fakes a wedding with a woman friend to please his ageing parents. Later on he 'outs' himself to his mother but not his father, who realises quietly that his son is homosexual.

The old man later invites his son's white boyfriend to go with him for a private stroll, during which he gives him an angbao as a gesture of accepting him as his 'child-in-law'.

This is perhaps the practical way in which many heartlanders deal with homosexuality in the family (which would be statistically rare at any rate) - a 'don't ask, don't tell; don't reject but don't promote' approach.

Finally, there are the heartlanders who are Christianised who reject homosexuality in the family vigorously, Mr Tan observed. These are the 'horror stories, where the gay son is hauled off to church to be exorcised and so on', he said.

Linking Christianisation to colonialism, Mr Tan lays it all down at the feet of the British, who brought in Section 377A of the Penal Code anyway. Dr Wu agrees that it is more likely to be Singapore's colonial legacy that explains any anti-gay attitude that may be found here.

But since there are more non-Christians than Christians in Singapore in general, the non- confrontational model is probably more widespread. For these folks, rice bowl concerns are paramount, added Mr Tan, which is why 'they don't give two hoots' for (any confrontation over) homosexuality.

andyho@sph.com.sg

DPA: Tolerance on the rise for Asia's gays, but laws lag

Bangkok, Oct 8 (DPA) Thailand's tolerance towards gays and transgender people is legendary in Asia.

Entire streets in Bangkok are dedicated to gay bars, the hospitals have become international centres for sex-change surgeries, and Thailand's TV and film scenes abound with "katoey" or transvestite comic characters, and gay love stories to the point of tedium.

Thailand's Pattaya beach resort is famed for its annual Miss Transvestite Pageant, and the island of Phuket has been hosting a gay pride parade since 1999 with the full support of local authorities.

Yet when Thai gay-rights activists earlier this year pushed for a mention in the country's
just-drafted constitution, the 18th to date, legislators baulked at a clause guaranteeing equal rights for the "third sex" along with other downtrodden folk - women, children, the poor and disabled.

"It was the first time in Thai history for the topic to be discussed legislatively, which was great, but finally it was a big abortion" said Viroj Tangwanit, a known Thai gay activist."It never came to life."

"Thai society is the most open in the world" Viroj added, "but officially, it is closed and narrow."

That contradiction - more tolerant societies versus still conservative laws - broadly characterizes the gay-transgender scene throughout the region, though there are signs of slow progress even on the legal level.

Increasingly open economies have exposed Asian societies to global trends, such the HIV/AIDS pandemic and access to the Internet, which have pressured governments into new, liberal terrain.

In communist China, where homosexuality was once described as a"Western illness" the government stopped punishing gays under "hooligan" laws in 1997 and removed homosexuality from its list of mental diseases in 2001.

While it still bans gay-rights activities, China recently allowed the establishment of NGO to help fight HIV/AIDS and has turned a blind eye to gay websites like Chinesegay.net.

There are limits, however. Chinese state censors have denied distribution of several recent Western films with gay themes, including Ang Lee's award-winning "Brokeback Mountain".

Taiwan has surpassed the mainland in its tolerance toward homosexuality. Since the 1980s, more than 100 gay-rights groups have sprung up across the island, and Taipei's former mayor Ma Ying-jeou and President Chen Shui-bian have both voiced support for greater rights for gays.

In 2002, Taipei began subsidizing an annual Gay Carnival, which attracted 10,000 people last year. Taiwan has also taken a step toward legalizing gay marriage by expanding the definition of the domestic-violence bill to cover gay couples.

If it passes, a Human Rights Basic Law drafted in 2003 would allow for legalized gay marriages, which would make Taiwan the first place in Asia to legalize gay unions. Only a few countries in the world have so far have done the same thing: the Netherlands, Belgium, Spain, Canada and South Africa.

In Japan, the government agreed to allow transgender people to change their birth sex on their national identity cards in 2004, a bureaucratic breakthrough that thousands of transgender people in Thailand are now fighting for, partly to exclude themselves from conscription into the army.

Singapore sends mixed signals on homosexuality. While consensual sex between men is still outlawed and punishable by a jail term, the government allows movies with gay themes "as long as the gay life is not depicted as desirable".

Punishments of homosexual acts are practically unheard of unless a minor or rape is involved, but many gay public events are banned. A gay picnic and a five-kilometre dash were prohibited to prevent participants from "politicising their cause", authorities said.

In Asia's predominantly Islamic countries such as Brunei, Indonesia and Malaysia, gay relations are still taboo, at least for Muslims, as was highlighted by the much-politicised 2000 sentencing for sodomy of Malaysia's former deputy premier Anwar Ibrahim.

But for non-Muslims, who make up 40 percent of Malaysia's population, there are small glimmers of legal leniency.

In Feb 2005, for instance, a Malaysian court allowed a non-Muslim male transsexual to change the gender on his identity card after he showed medical proof of a sex change by surgery.

In spite of that small milestone, the Malaysian government still refuses to acknowledge marriages in which one of the partners has undergone a sex-change surgery, saying they are same-sex unions and, therefore, illegal.

Similar laws apply in Indonesia, the country with the world's largest Muslim population, which is remarkably more tolerant toward the gay and transgender community than one might suspect.

"The only legal discrimination against gays is they can't legally get married, because Indonesian marriage law only recognizes a man and woman as able to get married," said Dede Utomo, a sociology lecturer from Airlangga University in Surabaya. Utomo, who is openly gay, is the founder of the gay support group GAYa Nusantara.

Indonesian gays were admittedly targeted by Islamic fundamentalists from 1997-2005 but Utomo looked back at the discrimination philosophically.

"These are the same groups who attacked nightclubs and bars, etcetera, such as in Yogyakarta, Solo and South Sulawesi, but funny enough, they would take bribes and cancel their attack if we gave them enough money" he said.

China Post: Gays in Taiwan make progress toward equality

Thursday, October 4, 2007

The China Post news staff

This coming weekend, Taiwan will hold a government-funded gay carnival and then next Saturday, Oct. 13, Asia's largest gay pride march will hit the streets of Taipei City. The Honglou Theater in downtown Taipei will be the venue for the carnival under the theme "How to Watch a Gay Film."

"We want the public to watch gay films in a relaxed atmosphere so that they can understand gay-related issues," said Jason Yeh, a city official at a news conference.

Twelve Taiwan-produced, made and foreign gay films are to be shown. The gay carnival, now in its 8th year, will be followed by the Gay Pride March, now the largest in Asia according to the Taiwan Tongzhi Hotline (Tongzhi, or 'comrade,' is a common euphemism for homosexuals in China, Taiwan and other parts of Asia).

Over 10,000 people -- both gay and straight -- are expected to join in the march through some of Taipei's busiest streets. Gay-rights activists from Japan, Singapore and Hong Kong are scheduled to fly to Taipei to participate.

The first Taiwan gay pride parade was held on Nov. 1, 2003, and was the first such homosexual self-expression event held in the greater Chinese community, which encouraged the gay-lesbian-bi-sexual-transgender community in Hong Kong to hold their own parade. Many people in Taiwan may not have even noticed the first small rights march, but since 2003, the event has picked up support and some prominent backers.

At last year's march, then-Taipei Mayor Ma Ying-jeou spoke about the importance of tolerance, while KMT City Councilor Lin Yi-hua and People First Party City Councilor Dai Hsi-chin joined the crowd in a "rainbow wave" dance.