Indonesia’s state of moral panic over LGBT rights was certainly not helped by the news last week that police in Bogor had uncovered a prostitution ring involving possibly dozens of underage boys (since many Indonesians wrongly assume there is a connection between homosexuality and pedophilia).
It was also not helped by ensuing reports that the boy’s pimp used dating applications such as Grindr to solicit customers.
Grindr, as you may be aware, is essentially Tinder for gay people (or more accurately, Tinder is Grindr for straight people, since it actually came out before Tinder). And even though Grindr was launched in 2009, Indonesian authorities are apparently only now realizing it exists in the wake of the prostitution scandal.
Naturally, there have been calls from many quarters to have the “gay” apps shut down in Indonesia and the country’s Minister of Communication and Information Technology (Menkominfo), Rudiantara, says he is ready to block Grindr as well as 17 other gay dating apps that have supposedly been used for prostitution in Indonesia.
“If that is the case, if there is already existing criteria and if it is disturbing the people, they yes they can be (blocked). And we will have a panel to discuss it,” Rudiantara said at the State Palace today as quoted by Detik.
Rudiantara said that there had not yet been any instruction from law enforcement agencies to block the applications, but that there would be an interdepartmental meeting next week to discuss the matter. And he said his ministry was ready to take action against the apps if it was so ordered.
If the government were to block Grindr and similar apps on the basis that there were some criminals using it for prostitution, then, if they weren’t being hypocritical, they would also have to block Tinder, not to mention Twitter and Facebook. all of which have been implicated as being used in soliciting clients for prostitutes, including underage sex workers.
But of course it’s much easier from a political standpoint to shut down anything having to do with LGBT in Indonesia, so we doubt the government will put much consideration into consistency when discussing whether to ban the apps next week.
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