the community. On 15 October 1998, RedQuEEn!, an e-mail list for queer-identified women was established. Au also launched his Yawning Bread website in November 1996, to which he would contribute the most thorough analyses of issues facing the local gay community. It would also serve as a de facto chronicle of Singapore gay issues and history as they unfolded. LGBTs could visit foreign websites to remain updated on gay news from around the globe or even view and download pornography, thus effectively bypassing Singapore's Undesirable Publications Act. To enable censorship of undesirable sites, all Internet traffic into and out of Singapore was required to be routed through local proxy servers. As a token of this restriction, to placate social conservatives, prominent porn websites such as Playboy and Penthouse were blocked. The official explanation was that the Government wanted to signal a stand on undesirable sites without unduly hindering the development of the Internet. However, websites of local origin were monitored more closely than those from overseas. One of the most important LGBT events of the decade took place in 1996 when People Like Us submitted their first application for registration as a society, after taking a year of painstaking effort to solicit ten signatories. The application was lodged with the Registrar of Societies on 7 November 1996. However, it was rejected on 9 April 1997 with no reason given. PLU's appeals all the way to the Prime Minister's Office met with no success. This rejection was reported by news agencies around the world. For over two decades, post-operative transsexuals had been discreetly lobbying to be given the right to have their new sex reflected in their identity cards (but not their birth certificates) and to marry opposite-sex spouses. They were finally granted their wish on 24 January 1996 via an announcement by MP Abdullah Tarmugi without much public fanfare or opposition. On 11 December 1998, Senior Minister Lee Kuan Yew responded to a gay man's question about the place of homosexuals in Singapore, live on CNN International by saying, '...what we are doing as a government is to leave people to live their own lives so long as they don't impinge on other people. I mean, we don't harass anybody.' Given Lee's stature as the venerated albeit authoritarian founding father of independent Singapore, these words helped set the tenor for official policy on homosexuality for many years to come. His