Fridae

August is that month of the year, when we look with curiosity at the number of flags hanging outside HDB flats to gauge the approval rating of the government, and when we look in vain for acknowledgement in the official celebrations of how we too are full citizens deserving of equal rights and respect.

Once, we said, never mind if the official celebrations ignore us. We could organise our own party to celebrate National Day. But that has since been banned. Don't even get me started on the Media Development Authority of Singapore (MDA), whose job is to make sure no positive image of gays and lesbians ever appears in our mass media. And don't forget that according to the law, every time you have sex with your boyfriend or girlfriend, you are a criminal.

But let's not dwell on these depressing realities. August is the month for remembering our history and for envisioning our future. Singapore was built through our heroic and successful struggle against a power that arbitrarily ruled from afar and thought itself more equal than us. What I want to envision now, is how sexual minorities can still find patriotism meaningful without having to first pretend we are straight.

I was at a conference recently and heard an academic giving a talk on the two ways to win. One way of winning is like playing chess. In this game, all the pieces are either black, or white. Some of the pieces are more powerful than others. And you get ahead by using your pieces to push your opponent's pieces off the board. At the end of the game, you are alone on the board but you are happy because you have out-smarted your opponent.

For sexual minorities in Singapore, this game of chess is even less appealing because we always play black and all our pieces, regardless of what they are, are only allowed to move like pawns.

But there is another game and another way to win. It is the game of jigsaw puzzle. In this game, the pieces explode in riots of colors, each piece is just as important as the other, and you win by finding a void where you can uniquely contribute in harmony with all the other pieces around you. At the end of the game, you win by creating a beautiful and seamless picture where no one is left out.

In the old way of winning, we try to kill one another, and everyone is dispensable except the grand old king. In the new way, we try to help one another and on one wins unless everyone wins.

This is why sexual minorities have such an important role to play in shaping Singapore's future. We understand more than most other people how badly chess represents the true meaning of life and success, and how its final outcome always sucks for everyone except a few "elites." We live in a country pathologically addicted to the chess game. A country that cannot imagine there is anything else in the world except chess. Our task is to help them see that chess is not the best nor the only game in town.

How can we do that? By starting at home and recognising that we too have been socialised into chess addiction. As a community of sexual minorities, we now need to stop playing chess ourselves. As a first step, ask yourself: who am I leaving out in my community right now? Am I prejudiced against people who are HIV+, against transgender people, butch women, effeminate men, fat people, skinny people, handicapped people, ugly people, poor people, successful people, straight people� How can all of us come together to create a seamless picture of the rainbow flag, leaving no one out?

Hey, I am not saying let's all start to do "politically correct" dating. Nor am I saying let's have a love fest, let's all hug each other and everything will be alright. But I am saying that as a community, we must stop bickering and putting each other down, and start listening, talking and collaborating.

Yes we are Indignant and yes, we are alienated. So how can sexual minorities escape the karma of being repeatedly marginalised? We can do so by refusing to play chess amongst ourselves and choosing to play jigsaw puzzle instead. And when we have mastered how to play jigsaw puzzle, we can teach our straight friends and family, and show them a more humane and fun way to play in this game we call life.

What does playing jigsaw puzzle look like to you? If you were playing jigsaw puzzle, what would you do differently each day?

Imagine how you would feel in a situation you are facing in your life right now, when you succeed in play jigsaw rather than chess.

Imagine what kind of ingenuity, courage and integrity is needed, as an individual living your life everyday, to continuously find ways to play jigsaw instead of the chess game offered to you. Imagine how it feels to be that someone who has this kind of ingenuity, courage and integrity.

And consider now how powerful that decision is. In that one decision, you have completely transformed the meaning of patriotism and progress. You can never listen to our politicians' speeches in the same old way again. You will know that nothing is inevitable. You will know that you have a choice. And you will know that your vision is just as valid as the vision of the political elites, because you can choose not to make one vision exclude the other, but can imagine instead what it would look like if all the visions were pieces of a giant jigsaw puzzle, a beautiful puzzle that our chess players with their noses clued to the chess board, cannot see. And when enough people decide they prefer playing jigsaw to chess, guess what would happen? The Berlin wall was impregnable for decades and came a-tumbling down in a few days.

So what does patriotism mean to gay, lesbian, bisexual & transgender Singaporeans? It means to stop bemoaning our misfortune, and to start thinking, really thinking, how we can be at the forefront of building a nation that we can finally, with pride, call home.

Dr Tan Chong Kee holds a Ph.D. in Chinese Literature from Stanford University in the United States and is one of Singapore's best-known figures in civil society activism.