Running Pink Dot, Singapore’s largest LGBT event, is no easy feat. The personal struggles of its organizers aside, there is backlash from critics and backlash from fellow LGBT organizations, not to mention the work of staging an event that gets larger every year. Less than a month away from the next one on June 4, attorney and committee spokesperson Paerin Choa tells us about how it all started, why coming out at work is productive and why millenials are so amazing.

I was a typical Singapore student, who had tuition after school. I went to a Chinese school, and grew up in a staunch Catholic family.

Growing up for me was a lot of hiding. I was also the eldest and only son in the family. I knew I couldn’t be gay. 

I’m 40 this year, and growing up, I had no Internet. I had no resources. There was no one I could talk to. All I knew was that the church says that it’s wrong, and my friends would make fun of me. 

As a kid in Singapore, all you need to do really is study and get into the stream that your parents want you to get into. When you have to study eight subjects, there’s not much distraction anyway.

I went to law school for practical reasons: my science and math were not good. I wanted to study mass communications or English, but I studied law so my parents could feel that they had been decent parents.

After law school, I got into acting. I went to the rehearsal room for a musical. I’d never seen so many gay people in the same room in my life. It was then that I realized that I was not alone. 

I acted for six years, and then I went back to law, and I felt myself walking back into the closet. And I did it, because I was afraid of career progression, being ostracized by colleagues, by bosses, by clients. 

But there came a point when it was just too tiring. You spend most of your hours at work. It’s just unproductive at work to be hiding, to be conscious of what you’re saying or doing. If you can’t bring yourself fully at work, you can’t really be productive. 

Pink Dot was very integral in my coming out. The second year, I invited my colleagues to Pink Dot, and that was my way of coming out to them. And when they came, it was their way of saying it was a non-issue. I was touched.

Before Pink Dot, there was a stereotype of what a gay person was. My mom thought a gay person would inevitably end up killing themselves. In her mind they will all end up sad and lonely. 

In the first two years of Pink Dot, no press wanted to talk to us. We couldn’t get an interview. It was so taboo.

Pink Dot became a social media baby, and by our third year, we began to get some interest. Somebody needed to go out and speak to press. And that person was me.

In everything you see in mainstream media, the gay character is erased or dies or ends up alone or becomes a serial killer. Or they turn straight—which is even worse!

We wanted to provide a narrative people don’t have access to. We wanted people to see gay Singaporeans in our videos and see we’re just like everyone else. 

Pink Dot is an inclusive, family-friendly event. We target straight allies, friends of gay people, and families of gay people. You see other gay people with their families, and your mom might not feel alone. She might see that there are other moms who are coping, dealing and accepting.

The first year, people wrote to us to say they were across the road, but they just didn’t dare to walk in. That was eight years ago. People are more courageous now.

We were clear that this event needed to be tailored to the unique psyche of Singapore. No protests, no marches. It needs to be “safe”. We even had Pinky, our mascot, and you don’t get any less threatening than Pinky. It’s very fuzzy.

Certain LGBT groups find we are not hard-hitting and not advocating enough. But we’ve always maintained there are other advocacy groups that are more postitioned to advocate. 

The biggest backlash we had was two years ago, with the Wear White campaign. It was scary and unfamiliar territory. It was also the year we had the most press coverage. We were covered by foreign media, and local media was covering it as a culture war. 

We’ve never criticized our detractors. We’ve never spoken ill of the Wear White campaign. We only ask for dialogue. We ask people to see the human side of things. 

Marriage equality is not something we even dare to think about. Section 377A needs to go. Even though the PM has said it will not be enforced, the law is still on the books. Nothing can progress in education, healthcare, media, and registration of societies with this law on the books.

There are real people who can’t get the help that they need. If a gay kid is questioning, he has nowhere to go. He can’t ask his teachers or counselors. They can’t tell him that it’s ok. Teachers are not trained to counsel a gay teenager.

The government has said we can’t change the laws because the people are not ready, and we should let society evolve. But then it’s a catch-22. If you don’t give them access to information, how will they evolve? This is where Pink Dot comes in. We start dialogue, make videos and hope more people will come.

The millenials are fearless. They have no hang-ups. They’re also not necessarily gay. There are a lot of straight, young people coming to volunteer for Pink Dot.

Society is changing at different paces. The older generation is changing slowly. In my generation, some of us are still living in fear. And then the millenial generation just doesn’t see being gay as even an issue. I was asking this young person about coming out. In my generation, we were all obsessed with it. But he said, “Oh, that’s so 80s.”

Correction: We've made an update to the 19th paragraph of this story: "But we’ve always maintained there are other advocacy groups that are more postitioned to advocate." The original version said "more resourced".