Sex....in the City?

Looking at the newspapers today.....it seems all that Singapore thinks about is...surprise...SEX! For a nation voted one of the worst in international polls we sure like to talk about it. Front pages of the Straits Times and New Paper feature articles on date rape, the prowlers at night spots and up to date reports of the latest scandal in town, the molestation case involving former TV presenter Vidya Shankar Aiyar.

In a country ranked last for two straight years in a global list of most sexually active nations, and where fertility rates are falling, debate over laws on sex is growing .
Sustained public criticism of Singapore's semi-authoritarian government, and its laws, is extremely rare. But calls for the government to withdraw from the bedroom are filling Web chat rooms, buzzing around cafes and stirring protests from lawyers.

It seems that the previously 'bo-chap' Singaporeans have miraculously showed a great interest in Goverment policies and current affairs.

The criticisms come as the government struggles to relax censorship laws that now ban Playboy magazine, clip racy scenes from movies and scissor drug references from pop cultural magazines -- rules that have helped earn Singapore the well-known sobriquet of Asia's "nanny state".

Although a ban on "Sex and the City", the hit U.S. TV sitcom about a quartet of single women in New York, was lifted in September along with a 21-year ban on Cosmopolitan magazine, authorities have yet to air the show or allow "Cosmo" to go on sale.

But laws on sex are different, residents say, exposing a raw nerve in a country that only this year revealed that gays now worked in the public service -- a low-key policy shift aimed in part at fostering a creative class and attracting foreign talent.

Meanwhile, prostitution remains openly legal.

On Singapore's most fashionable shopping street, for example, a plaza with dry cleaning services, jewellers and golf stores is also filled with escort services and several floors of discos known as gathering points for women selling sex.