Ho Ching's views on LGBT rights

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Ho Ching (何晶, Hé Jīng) (born 27 March 1953) is the Chief Executive Officer of Temasek Holdings and has held the appointment since 2002. She is married to the current Prime Minister of Singapore, Lee Hsien Loong. Ho first joined Temasek Holdings as a Director in January 2002. She then became its Executive Director in May 2002 and was appointed Chief Executive Officer on 1 January 2004. As of 2016, she is listed as the 30th most powerful woman in the world by Forbes.

LGBT articles shared on Facebook

Ho is known to publicly share dozens of articles a day on a myriad of topics on Facebook[1]. She sporadically shares positive articles on LGBT developments worldwide, as and when she comes across them.

The following are examples, screen captured from her Facebook timeline:

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The post which elicited the most comments from both pro- and anti-LGBT factions was the one on Pink Dot's 10th year, scheduled to be held on 21 July 2018. The incident was widely reported on alternative media websites.

LGBT activist Eileena Lee has compiled a comprehensive Facebook album of Ho's LGBT-supportive posts:[2].

Position on sexual orientation of CEOs

During an event organised by the Institute of Policy Studies in 2013, it was revealed by Prof. Tommy Koh that Ho told him that the sexual orientation of the successor to Singtel's CEO Lee Hsien Yang did not matter[3].

Comments on gender diversity in nature

On 18 March 2019, Ho Ching shared on her Facebook page a BBC article on Sam Smith coming out as non-binary[4]. She made the following comments to accompany the post:

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"Interesting...

Birds and butterflies can be split half half male and female, one side of body on male colours and the other female.

And other "mixed sex" butterflies are also known to be a mix of different proportions.

There are also articles regarding the science of confirming if athletes were male or female. Apparently, there are several markers involved, and these have a range of values, rather than a binary value, for instance the testosterone levels.

Just as half half or different proportion male-female birds and butterflies are rare, perhaps humans too will have a range.

Apparently some cultures recognise such variations with 5 categorisation of sexual descriptions like masculine males, feminine males, half-half, masculine females, and feminine females.

Such is the diversity of nature, which is perhaps the outcome of genetic variations and natural evolution."

Pointing out different stable family structures

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On 6 August 2022, in response to a Straits Times Forum letter entitled, "Uphold marriage and family as highest priority"[5], Ho posted the following message on Facebook[6]:

"Jonathan Lim:

We should uphold marriage and the family as the highest priority in Singapore.

Jonathan is fortunate that his children are growing up in a safe and caring family environment, where they learn to care for themselves, others and future generations.

Caring for others should include the vulnerable and others different from ourselves too.

Western societies have a different norm of parental relationships. It is common for children to move out on their own as soon as they are able, like owlets being tossed out of their nests as soon as they have learnt to fly.

In many east Asiatic societies, living together as an extended family is the norm. Families with several generations under one roof is celebrated.

Western societies also often cause perverse outcomes bcos of unintended consequences of their policies.

For instance, welfare benefits are reduced for a married couple, so many couples choose to remain unmarried in order to have more welfare benefits.

This is one reason why more and more children are born out of wedlock in such societies, even when both parents are physically living as a couple and one family under one roof.

But Jonathan also well knows there are single mothers and single fathers amongst us raising children.

There are also couples where one partner has had a sex change, and they too can form a stable loving family, while some heterosexual couples could have dysfunctional family environment.

Families can have heterosexual black sheep, or filial homosexual or transexual children. These depend both of the family values but also the values of the individuals.

Some individuals are greedy, jealous, or simply cruel or callous in their attitudes. Others simply could jot get along for various reasons. In such cases, family harmony is broken and it may be better to split up.

So the stability and loving environment really depends on the commitment of people to want to make their relationship or partnership work.

So while families and marriage are an important unit for a stable society, it is not the be all and end all of human relationships."

See also

• Ho Ching
• Lee Hsien Loong's views on homosexuality
• Lee Kuan Yew's views on homosexuality
• Singapore politicians' views on homosexuality

References

• Eileena Lee's Facebook album, "HO Ching's LGBTQ affirmative posts.":[7].

Acknowledgements

This article was written by Roy Tan.