It’s Gay Pride month around the world and in Singapore,
it’s the month that Pink Dot SG falls in. This is the time when the LGBTQ
(Lesbian, Gay, Bisexual, Transgender) Community gets to celebrate being just
that.
Pride is one of those events that stirs passions. As
much as the LGBTQ community feels the need to celebrate being who they are,
there is an equally passionate group of people ready to denounce the month as a
symbol of everything wrong with society. I am, of course, talking about the more
extreme religious community.
Homosexuality (for the sake of argument, this term
will be applied to the L’s, B’s, T’s and Q’s as well as the G’s) has always
been a contentious topic. The Abrahamic faiths of Christianity and Islam
denounce it as a perversion of God’s work and if you were to ask most straight
people what they really felt about homosexuals, you’ll find that they think of
the homos as a little strange (as a heterosexual guy, I can’t imagine how any “normal”
guy would prefer a guy’s anus to a girl’s c***t).
Feelings against homosexuality are such that
homosexuality is illegal in any part of the world where the political class
needs to show its religious credentials. Being a homosexual is for example,
illegal in Saudi Arabia, a country which hosts the two most sacred sites in Islam.
Homosexuality was decriminalized in most parts of the Western
world in the last century (from the 1930s onwards) but despite legalization, the
topic of homosexuality still arouses passions and conflicts. In the USA for
example, you had bakers who got sued for discrimination based on sexuality and
then counter-sued for being discriminated against based on religious beliefs,
all because they refused to bake cakes for Gay People who wanted to get
married. More on the history of decriminalization can be found at:
https://www.humandignitytrust.org/lgbt-the-law/a-history-of-criminalisation/
In Singapore, the topic of homosexuality becomes
exceedingly contentious whenever the topic of 377A, or the criminal code that
criminalises anal sex between men comes around for discussion. The religiously
inclined, lead by Professor Thio Li-Ann have argued fervently to keep the
section, despite the fact that three former Chief Justices, a former Attorney-General
and one of our most respected former diplomats have all pointed out that there
are simply no sound legal arguments for keeping the section (What does it say
that we give the weight of the words of a professor who has only practiced law
in academic fantasy land to the weight of the words of three men who practiced
the law at the pinnacle?).
The result of trying to keep the peace between these warring
factions, the government, which prides itself in being about “Rule of Law,” has
taken the view that “legal ambiguity” is best. The section of the penal code remains
but the government assures the LGBTQ community that it will not actively enforce
the law. Hence, Singapore, which takes pride in being the most secular and forward-looking
society in the region, is the third most regressive place for homosexuals in
the region (after Brunei, Malaysia and tied with Myanmar, a country that has
been made famous by brutal military regimes).
https://theaseanpost.com/article/aseans-shifting-attitudes-towards-lgbt-rights
My personal preference is for the girl’s privates and
that would remain true whether 377A existed or not. It does not affect me
personally if a man preferred to f** a guy’s a** over a girl’s c*** and did it
with another guy who was able to give consent in the privacy of the bedroom.
For me, there should be no need to have a “Gay Pride”
month. Why do the LGBTQ community need a month to celebrate being proud for
simply being who they are? As Professor Thio Li-Ann argued in her 2007 speech
in parliament “As fellow citizens,
homosexuals are entitled to expect decent treatment from the rest of us; but they
have no right to insist we surrender our fundamental moral beliefs so they can feel
comfortable about their sexual behaviour.”
However, while Professor
Thio is correct in what she says, she forgets that she is making the case for
Gay Pride. In her determination to keep homosexuals from entering sexual
relationships with their chosen partners, she is denying them a fundamental right
that the rest of take for granted.
Professor Thio
has rightly pointed out that Homosexuals are in the minority. They are a
minority that has been told for over and over again that they are a “perversion”
or “shame” for just being who they are. This isn’t a case of minority being
different, it’s a case of a community expecting this minority to feel awful
merely for being who they are.
As anyone who has
been a parent of teenagers will tell you – there come a point where the
teenager decides that they’re going to be whoever they want to be regardless of
what you think. Think of Gay Pride as something like this. People like
Professor Thio Li-Ann give Gay Pride meaning to the Gay Community. Gay people grow
up with Professor Thio and her ilk repeating the message that they are sinful
and awful and when you have the audacity to disagree, you get called militant
and terrorist like.
Unless you’re a
repressed homosexual, the only way to make Gay Pride and Pink Dot is for people
to look at the homosexual community and say “So What if you’re Gay.” It’s not a
question of what you believe but how you react to people. The religious majority
are ingeniously proclaiming that they are the discriminated ones and everyone
gets upset with them for wanting homosexuals to be the repressed variety. What
they forget is that as the “sexual majority,” they are the ones holding the
power and they should ask what role they had in making Gay Pride so precious
and necessary to the LGBTQ community.
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