Wear White: The mediatized politics of religious anti-LGBT activism in Singapore

As a result of the perceived rise in LGBT visibility and acceptance in Singapore, a social media campaign started in 2014 called Wear White, which brought together both Muslim and Christian participants to counter the annual Pink Dot rally. This is Singapore's version of (gay) pride parades, which are held in major cities all across the world. This article aims to analyze this religious backlash against LGBT, paying attention to its “media logic,” a term borrowed from the “mediatization” literature, and presenting it as a framework to understand the politicization of religion in the context of the Singapore state. It asks: (1) What sorts of intellectual arguments and aesthetic techniques are deployed in Wear White's media discourse? (2) How does Wear White's media discourse balance its anti-LGBT message within the secular(ist) context of Singapore? (3) How does social media affect Wear White's message in its attempt to bring it to a larger audience? To this end, the article engages in a critical assessment of Wear White's media discourse of the campaign, including video logs (vlogs) and social media posts.