The most widely talked about topic in the recent weeks is something close to heart indeed. After Minister Mentor Lee made a statement that could be interpreted as either about removing laws that discriminate homosexuality or maintain status quo and not enforcing the current laws, the english speaking community went into a fury. Some are for equality for all, others like Jonathan, Agnes of course who can forget Yvonne Lee from NUS Law school (who is currently going through a tough period from a huge backlash) and others decided that homosexuals are less than human and they should be banished, if not continued to be illegal or a 'sub'-culture.
Now the most interesting thing is that when you look at both sides of the issues, there are far bigger implications and many logical fallacies. Why should we continue incriminating homosexuals? Well because the bible says so. Period. (for an in-depth read on homosexuality and christianity,
this is a speech by Rev Dr Yap Kim Hao. I am no expert in Christianity, so I'll let the expert do the talking - please read that nette)
I wrote once about why religion should never be mixed into law. Some may argue that law came from religion, but i beg to differ. The premises of law came not only from religion, but along the way many other thinkers and philosophers and movements throughout history have shaped law. Obviously laws that came before the bible must have came from somewhere no? So to argue that law as we know of today descended from biblical interpretation, is as best being ethnocentric.
Religion should be removed from law simply because all religions are equal, why should we incriminate what one religion feels that is wrong onto others whom have no opinion. Simply stated, our Muslim brothers do not consume pork, should we then ban all pork? Hence the key word we are looking at is secularism, whereby policies and initiatives are created without religious biases.
After removing religion from the debate of homosexuality, we then come down to 2 other arguments, the medical argument, and the family values and society argument. Now proponents of the medical arguments are, ironically all christians! They claim that the American Psychological Association (APA) removed homosexuality as a disease back in the 70's due to pressure from the gay right movement. What they did not tell you is that later on in 1994, long after the gay rights movement, APA stood up and reasserted themselves that homosexuality is not a mental disease and they did not removed it due to pressure from gay groups.
The other medical argument would of course be the nature and nurture argument. The problem with this is that people who cite research do not know the basic premise of research, the double negative nature of research. As an example, if a group of scientist embark on a research to show the nature/biological causes of homosexuality, and they do not find support, it DOES NOT mean that therefore it proves the nurture argument. it simply means that in their sample population, they have not enough evidence to prove nature. period. that is all there is to it.
Furthermore holding a nature OR nurture view is highly simplistic. Research will show you that gender, intelligence, race are all nurture AND nature. Its a case of both because both are so highly intertwined that they cannot be separated, for every scientific research done on one, we can find another scientific research that shows the other, and that is the spirit of academia, to arrive at an eventual reasonable range of explanation.
Proponents of the medical argument will also often cite Dr Spritzer's research on reparative therapy proving that gay men can turn straight. Well I'll have you know that the very people who started this therapy ended up breaking away from the church after they were caught in gay bars and were publicized in the media as one big hypocrisy. Moving on the Dr Spritzer's research, his research was not to show that reparative therapy works on homosexual. Rather he gathered a group of homosexual who went through therapy (they were volunteers by the way) and then assessed them. Now this is a group motivated for change, 97% of them are of christian background, and 93% of them said that religion were extremely important to them. Now the study he did showed that TWO-THIRDS (63%) of this motivated group still had feelings towards the same gender. This figure is higher amongst gay men (at 86%). Even Dr Spritzer himself came up and expressed his disappointment at anti-gay religious groups misquoting his studies. One also must remember that Dr Spritzer himself was one of the instrumental figure who help in the declassification of homosexuality as a mental illness
Still on the case of medical arguments, recently Dr Alan Chin Yew Liang (i think that's his name) claimed that homosexuality is a disease because being homosexual shortens life-span, and by his definition of a disease, that its a condition that shortens life-span. Well it must then surprise all of us than being male is a disease, and being left handed is a disease, and being members of different race is a disease then. As we all know, males have shorter life expectancy than females, left-handed people live shorter than right handed people, members of different countries and race have different life expectancies. Furthermore, Dr Chin justified his conclusion by using a report that shows than being homosexual shortens life-span because of the high prevalence of HIV in this population. For my unbiased reader, it must be then obvious that it is HIV that is the disease that shortens the life-span and not homosexual. Going by Dr Chin's logic, heterosexual men whom visits prostitutes and have unprotected sex must then be a disease, since they are by far, the population with the highest prevalence of HIV.
Moving on from medical to family and society arguments. A very fascinating thing to note is that very definition of both ideas. It appears that for those anti-gay people, they assume that a family must comprise of a father, mother and children. And that if there were gay people around who are minding their own business and having sex with their own partners, somehow their family unit will fall apart. I am not quite following their logic, are you? What about single parent families then? What about unwed mothers then? How will their family fall apart? Definitions for family do not take into considerations culture as well, in many parts of the world, fathers and mothers do not look after their children, it is other members who do so; also what about families with adopted children? So what exactly is a family? Psychologist have seek to define family as a group of people who live together have established relationship and care for each other. You might also be interested to show that studies done, such as that by Tasker and Golombok (1997) shows that an overwhelming majority of children growing up in gay families have a heterosexual orientation.
How does families then fall apart? How does society fall apart?
The biggest misunderstanding is that society is an entity, that it exist as something concrete and thus can be destroyed. That is not the case, society exist because humans exists and there are interactions with one another. Because society always exist, because it is not an entity, it cannot be destroyed. For all those who say that if everyone is homosexual, there would be no society,
here's Dr John Corvino's reply "with all due respect, if the whole world becomes roman catholic priest, there will be no society too". The case in point is that either society exist, or, when humans eventually become extinct, it does not exist. There's is no destroying of a society.
So why should it bother each and everyone of us? The very idea of tolerance, acceptance and love. At no point should we discriminate anyone because they are different. We have seen many of such instances in the past and even today. African Americans were overtly and very much discriminated against in the past, today such discrimination may not exist overtly, but implicit attitudes test measured still shows some form of discrimination. Gender discrimination was also something that existed and continue to exist, women were not able to attend institutes of higher educations, some are not even allowed to work in other countries. Even in home ground, despite what we would like to believe, discrimination against other races can be observed, such as sitting beside members of the same race when there are seats available besides members of different races as well.
Why should we fear people who are different?
Even if we can't change the fact that there will always be some form of discrimination, should we then inscribe in law that some groups are less equal than others and hence they should be discriminated. Some people might argue that majority of the population is not ready, but if we look closer, all major shifts in mindset happens at a time where 'majority of the people are not ready'. During the civil rights movement for the blacks, majority of the Southerners were not ready. I assure you that many men today still don't think women should have equal rights, but then should we use this and justify that women therefore should not have equal rights.
Furthermore, homosexuals in Singapore are not even asking for additional rights, not to be treated as special, but to be treated as human. That we have a right to love, and a right to express our love. Why should it be that an expression of love is as guilty as culpable homicide not amounting to murder? Why can't gay men love? There is absolutely no reason to deny anyone of a basic fundamental human rights of love and expression of love.
For anyone who wants to extend this to bestiality, pedophilia, necrophilia, or even screwing a tree, think again. The point here is that this is 2 consenting adults who can make their own choice, they are not forced. I don't really know how an animal, dead people or a tree can give their consent, please do enlighten me. As for pedophiles, we are not talking in the same league, because the law and the medical world assumes that children cannot make choices, hence everything a child does requires parental consent. This is also why children are considered juvenile and trial differently from logically reasoning adults.
It boils down to one thing, homosexuals are human, if we continue to discriminate against them, because anti-gay religious people dictates so, then where do we stop? who are we going to attack next? Are we going to discriminate against people who do not have the same religious inclination? Are we going to use an interpretation of a religious text and come up with new laws (this brings to mind the prohibition of alcohol in the US in the 70s). Homosexuals have been having sex since and will continue to have sex; homosexuals have loved each other and will continue to do so. Why should we then, decide that the lives of others are less worthy than ours, and deny them of their rights?
If we want to continue to incriminate them? What is next? Sexuality cleansing? Systematically murder all homosexuals?
What is next? Love for all? Compassion for all? Or a situation as Yvonne Lee fondly puts it, equality for all, but all means some.
word count: 1931 (as requested by alexis)
