When it comes to sexuality, gender, and identity, few things influence our thinking more than the media. Singapore media’s glowing coverage of LGBT activism has clouded public debate.
Consider The Straits Times.
- It recently featured drag performer “Opera Tang” and his 94-year-old grandmother sewing costumes together — a story framed as heartwarming family bonding.
- Earlier this year, it profiled asexual-identifying individuals without challenging the conceptual basis of their identity.
- And in 2023, on the self-professed “Transgender Day of Visibility”, it published a celebratory piece on a male-to-female transition, offering affirmation but no critical engagement.
These stories aren’t neutral.
The fourth estate doesn’t just shape what we think about, but how we think. By setting the tone through the national broadsheet, they present subjective, contested identities as settled truths, and frame dissent as cruel, even responsible for stigma and harm.
The media should be a force for truth, but then, what is truth? Is it whatever aligns with the latest progressive cause? Or is it the steady ground of time-tested institutions and moral frameworks?
From “Protest” to “Singapore’s first outdoor gay event” to a “Celebration of love in all forms”
Since its inception in 2009, Pink Dot has consistently attracted coverage from mainstream media outlets. Yet what proves most contentious is not the predictable, once-a-year spotlight but how the framing of that coverage has evolved.
From a mere description of an event to an affirmation of increasingly-desired values, it seems that the national broadsheet has picked a side. This shift points to a growing willingness to see identity as detached from the body and shaped by nothing more than language.
How Did We Get Here?
2009–2025: From Impartial Observation to Moral Endorsement
Just over 16 years ago, The Sunday Times’ coverage of Pink Dot’s inaugural gathering on 16 May 2009 would likely have raised eyebrows if published today. The event was described as an “outdoor gay event” organised by a “gay interest group” campaigning for a “more inclusive Singapore.” The tone was notably detached and descriptive.
That the article made a point to highlight the event was “peaceful and good-natured” signalled a desire to reassure readers that no social norms were disrupted. Attendees were depicted picnicking on the grass with their dogs. This was a framing that focused more on novelty and order than on moral or cultural significance.
Over the years though, media coverage of Pink Dot has taken many shapes. In 2014, the tone was more balanced, even contested. Pink Dot’s visibility was reported alongside the “Wear White” movement, a counter-effort led by religious groups to affirm traditional values. That year, media coverage acknowledged Pink Dot’s contested legitimacy, reflecting a society negotiating between competing moral visions.
By 2022, The Straits Times adopted a noticeably more empathetic tone. The inclusion of an Ipsos survey highlighting growing support for same-sex relationships signalled a shift in the moral framing.
Articles now featured quotes that spoke of “discrimination,” “struggles,” and “stigma” — terms that anchored the LGBT experience within a framework of social injustice. Regardless has examined these claims methodically here, here and here.
This trajectory culminated in the coverage of Pink Dot 2024 and 2025, where media framing has evolved into open affirmation. 2025’s Articles highlighted stories of time-capsule items used in individuals’ “gender journeys,” featured quotes from Pink Dot spokespeople prominently, and reinforced the message that LGBTQ advocacy is not only legitimate, but morally commendable.
But Today, We Have Choreography, Not Reporting
The Straits Times article on Pink Dot 2025 presents itself as journalism, but its tone and structure serve another purpose: subtle advocacy. From the opening sentence—“Thousands adorned in pink gathered… in celebration of love in all forms”—the language primes the reader emotionally. Words like “celebration” and “love” are presented as settled values rather than contested ideas. The effect is not to inform, but to set the moral frame before any facts are introduced.
Every chosen detail reinforces that frame. A chest binder is treated as a meaningful heirloom, its medical and psychological implications left entirely unexplored. A drag performer’s headdress becomes a sentimental emblem of family support, though no questions are raised about what that support actually entails. A shared cutlery set is turned into a metaphor for relational healing and removal of barriers. These aren’t neutral accounts. They are loaded symbols, handed to the reader as evidence of virtue.
Family imagery plays a central role. Whether it’s the grandmother and the headdress, or the mother accepting her son’s homosexual partner, the message is clear: familial acceptance signals social progress. But these stories are told with no hint of complexity. There is no mention of brokenhearted parents, no acknowledgement that disagreement might exist without hatred. Affirmation is presented as the only valid response.
What the article leaves out is just as revealing. The chest binder is not framed as part of a medicalised pathway with serious long-term implications. The same-sex marriage certificate is described with quiet hope, but the deeper social and legal questions surrounding marriage go unexamined.
There is no space for opposing views, no questions posed, no debate entertained. Instead, the reader is guided from one soft-focus story to another, each reinforcing the same unspoken moral: this is what goodness looks like.
When reporting takes this shape, it stops being a tool for public understanding and becomes a vehicle for persuasion. And when persuasion is slipped into the news without transparency, it’s not just the story that’s being managed—it’s the reader.
Singaporeans should read carefully, not just for what’s said, but for what’s assumed, omitted, and emotionally pre-loaded. Because once editorial tone becomes indistinguishable from activism, critical thinking erodes and public trust evaporates.
Why Does Any of This Even Matter?
So what? Isn’t this just the reporting of information, life does go on right? Well… no.
As media theorist Roger Fowler describes, “The formation of news events, and the formation of news values, is in fact a reciprocal, dialectical process in which stereotypes are the currency of negotiation.” The media has a strong say in deciding what becomes “news” and what values are celebrated, shaping public opinion.
This subtly but surely steers what society sees as good and the norm.
What we see today as a gaping concern is that the media’s moral responsibility has to be grounded in more than sentiment or ideology. Is “good” defined by the affirmation of all identities? Do we look at identities as fluid and self-declared or is the media prepared to look at identity as something that has been embedded in biological and social realities?
A striking example of how the mainstream media has functioned as a platform that has been slowly forwarding self-identified identities can be seen in the May 2025 article by The Straits Times that sought to raise awareness about individuals who identify as asexual in Singapore but made no attempt to critically evaluate the conceptual foundations of such identities.
The idea that one can claim a sexual identity based on introspective feelings and online content — such as Tumblr posts or YouTube videos, is not only presented without question, but subtly celebrated. There is little reflection on whether these emerging identity categories reflect enduring realities of human nature, or are a product of cultural hyper-individualism and emotional introspection.
Something similar can be seen again in an article celebrating the transition of a transgender woman on the International Transgender Day of Visibility in March 2023.
Even when concerns are subtly raised, such as by Psychiatrists who tell of how glamorisation can lead to more impressionable youths wrongly identifying as transgender, these concerns are many times taken as passing remarks.
What stands instead is the impression that affirming such identities is a necessary moral duty as part of a compassionate society.
The affirmation of queer stories seems progressive and inclusive, but this often stifles out the opinions of those who ground their realities in relational structure and tradition.
Such stifling is already seen today with Rice Media’s removal of an interview with Pastor Chang Tou Chen in May 2024 that sought to share his lived experience leaving the “gay lifestyle” and choosing to pursue celibacy instead.
What ensued were harsh and derogatory comments assailing Rice Media for supporting “conversion therapy” (which was not the case) and demeaning Pastor Tou Chen’s story as invalid. Regardless covered this incident here.
In its pursuit of representation, the media risks replacing open discourse with an ideological monoculture, one where identity is defined by introspection (‘I feel, therefore I am’), dissent is silenced, and long-held understandings of the human person are crowded out under the banner of compassion and dignity.
Because ideas have consequences, bad ones leave victims. And these are not ideas Singapore can afford to treat lightly.
