Singapore's Stonewall?

I just witnessed beautiful and chaotic democracy in Singapore. While I was thousands of miles away in Stanford, the new media (Twitter) channeled the realtime reflections of people on the ground, and made me feel like I was part of this historic event.

Thousands of Singaporeans gathered at Suntec City in an orderly manner to demonstrate their opinions on whether or not secular civil society should be used to push quasi-religious agendas. It was incredible for several reasons:

1. That Singaporeans should care so much about an important topic, any important topic, especially important topics like discrimination against homosexuals, and keeping civil society secular
2. That they were able to organize themselves and engage in non-violent democracy - choosing to vote off the new committee that had taken over by semi-force
3. Immediate, realtime feedback on the process was available via new technology in the form of Twitter. In a short twitter, we get a view of the proceedings colored by the observer's thoughts, and moderate that to get a more general view based on the aggregate of responses.

Is this Singapore's Stonewall? It's not exactly the same thing but some broad themes are similar:

1. Spontaneous civil activism. Well not absolutely spontaneous, considering that both the Old and New Guard had been exhorting people to join the EOGM for weeks. I don't think they could have anticipated the size of the response though, so it was spontaneous in that sense.

2. Activism against discrimination, especially with regard to discrimination against the protrayal of homosexual as neutral, or not.

3. A watershed event in Singapore civil society. It's premature to call it that but if the Government extends the right/privilege to this free democracy other societies (e.g. environmental organizations, arts societies etc), we might be seeing a defining moment in Singapore civil society - when Singaporeans cared enough to stand up and be counted for what they believed in, in a non-violent fashion.

Hopefully, this encourages the government to release their tight control on demonstrations and civil society.