taken from paul's site

the thing that worries me is that - more often than not - arguments advocating gay rights seem to come only from gays themselves. but that makes it much easier to demonise the argument: "you're gay - of course you would ask for rights. why wouldn't you? but please, respect our space." it makes it easier when it's only the PLU who's doing anything because you can paint them as a renegade, no-good, emotive bunch of selfish freaks of nature.

no civil rights movement has ever succeeded without the help of those outside the discriminated class. i feel it is much more powerful when a heterosexual says that he believes in according respect and dignity to gays than to have ellen degeneres come out on national tv.

i think it says a lot about the majority and dominant class who prefer to keep silent rather than to try and involve themselves in the fight. how the state treats an individual should be of concern to all of us. when the state abuses it power against the weak, it should matter to all of us. it says a lot about an individual who believes that minority rights are "their" problem. let's just carry on with our lives because we're not affected anyway.

but history has taught us that a government who believes its people to be pliant will soon extend its power against anyone who dissents. so that in the antebellum period in the united states, not only were blacks enslaved, but even whites had their freedoms taken away: no one could speak, no one could associate, and for long periods, the NAACP had to fight to keep their membership list secret because even the whites themselves were afraid of reprisal.

so many singaporeans complain everyday about mrt noises, gst being raised, buses arriving late and of the government not listening to them. you want to know why? because the government has no interest in being interested unless you are. the government has no real incentive to make deep fundamental shifts in philosophy, thinking and behaving unless you are. if the government thinks it can get away with superficial, stop-gap improvements in municipal issues, it will do just that.

people say these bread and butter issues come first. no. it does not. failure to deal with such issues is only one manifestation of a chronic unwillingness to cede autonomy to individuals and having respect for the intelligence of society. if you think that problems of individual liberty and economic issues can be divorced and analysed separately, you're dead wrong.

but it's not only about how the government interacts with you. it's a question of how important you see yourself as being. if you believe that you're an individual, a person who can think, reflect and formulate positions, if you had any self-esteem at all, you would want the government to recognise your right to conscience. the ability and protection of your ability to do what you believe in, and to behave as you think is right is so fundamental and intrinsic in how you see yourself. i cannot understand people who say rights don't matter because it means that you don't matter. as my constitutional law tutor said, the ability to withdraw yourself from the homogenizing power of society is so crucial to the education and formation of a morally complex human being. in other words, individuals must have privacy and they must be given autonomy to decide for themselves and to learn from those decisions.

(i'm not going to get into the insulting discussion about third party harm because it's clear enough i'm not advocating violence or crime.)

people who think that this is just about gay people getting it on with each other totally misconceive what is at stake. it is about the state regulating who you can form intimate relations with. if the state doesn't say that it's wrong for a pretty girl to go out with an ugly guy (and how many time have we seen that already?), if it doesn't say you can't use condoms, can't get an abortion, so that procreation is not in issue, then what's left to justify this double-standard? what's left to justify an arbitrary flexing of state power against people it deems 'not normal.'

homosexuals should be prepared to fight the good fight. but heterosexuals who refuse to do so are equally morally blameworthy. guess who i think are being selfish?