Last updated: 12 January 2005

 
People Like Us had very modest beginnings in 1993. In its early years, its chief activity was the monthly Sunday forum that attracted a fast-growing number of gay men and women. 

However, it was always under surveillance by the police, and two instances recounted here demonstrated this clearly. 

More worrying, as PLU grew, was the risk of press exposure, and by 1995 it was decided that PLU needed to be formally registered as a society. 

Those were the days when police entrapment was commonplace and the Josef Ng case was fresh in many people’s minds. 

Yet police harassment was also a catalyst, as the Rascals case showed. 

After taking a year to find 10 persons brave enough to put their names forward, PLU lodged its first application in November 1996. Not only did the Registrar of Societies refuse to grant registration (1997), he refused to give a reason for his decision too. Despite appeals as far as to the Prime Minister, PLU did not succeed.  [The full correspondence between People Like Us and the government are also archived here]

PLU terminated its Sunday forums and moved to cyberspace in 1997. SiGNeL became its main discussion platform, and has remained so till today. 

The CNN interview (December 1998) in which Senior Minister Lee Kuan Yew was ambushed with a gay question marked a turning point. The gay issue would gradually move out into the media from that point on. 

Meanwhile, the government made pious remarks about opening up. The artifice that was “Singapore 21” was part of this public relations exercise. PLU decided to prick the balloon with a gay forum (May 2000). 

Coincident with the forum attempt was PLU’s first street and online survey to gauge Singaporean attitudes. 

The gay forum was also refused a permit, but its aftermath was even better than PLU had hoped. The government was reduced to stuttering incoherence. 

In March 2003, the book People Like Us: Sexual Minorities in Singapore was finally launched after a 3-year gestation. Containing various essays and papers, it gave readers an overview of many issues seen from a gay perspective.

In July 2003, Time magazine quoted Prime Minister Goh Chok Tong on gay civil servants. It opened the floodgates of media comment on the gay issue, but it also brought out the shrill fundamentalists. At the same time, it re-energised PLU.

After allowing the worst of the furore to die down, a second attempt at registration was made in February 2004. This was again rejected by the Registrar of Societies. See also the full correspondence.

History at length