MDA guidelines snub a segment of society

Common sense would suggest that materials deemed acceptable for library circulation in Singapore should also be acceptable for purchase, and vice versa.

Recent decisions, however, by the National Library Board (NLB) and the Media Development Authority (MDA) have called into question common sense.

Copies of an Archie comic are available for borrowing even as a moratorium was imposed on its importation and sale in bookshops.

Meanwhile, the NLB has moved two children’s books to its adult collection, when children’s books belong self-evidently in the children’s section.

These are examples of the logical contortions necessitated by the policy towards queer-positive media representation in Singapore.

Beyond these counter-intuitive scenarios, another tangle arises when the Education Ministry has forbidden sexuality educators from providing the same information the Health Promotion Board is struggling to convey to the public.

Do queer and transsexual Singaporeans have an equal stake in the national common space even as MDA guidelines prohibit media that “encourage, promote or glamourise” their existence and experiences?

In effect, the state thus allows only negative stereotypes and anti-queer propaganda in the media, rather than let queerness be seen as an ordinary thread in the social fabric, a realistic depiction of the modern world.

Besides having given rise to contradictory policies among statutory boards, the MDA’s guidelines generate a situation where a segment of society is free to be vilified, but cannot easily offer, in their defence, honest accounts of their lives and histories.