OPINION | Gay Agenda vs. Religious Agenda, and other stories of the week

The potential upcoming repeal of the controversial Section 377A of the Penal Code has been extensively covered by the news lately. For those unaware, Section 377A criminalises gay sex. While no one in recent memory has ever been prosecuted under this section of the Penal Code, the fact that it remains on our statute books in this day and age has caused consternation to many. After all, this section is a colonial hangover and other former British colonies, such as India, have abolished similar laws. Ranging from court cases to petitions to Pink Dot events, activists and concerned citizens have long since been trying to get this law repealed. On the other side of the fence, conservatives have been fighting to keep this section in place suggesting that "it was time to act to protect family, marriage, our freedom of conscience, and most importantly our children, who are at the heart of these social institutions.” To me, this argument seems completely illogical. Why would legalising gay sex endanger heterosexual relationships or marriages? Homosexuality has been around since ancient times. Yet, societies and traditional family units have endured. This goes to show that all sections of society can coexist peaceably if we just learn to accept that people are allowed to be different. Homosexuality is not a contagious disease. Perhaps proponents of keeping Section 377A alive prefer to pretend that homosexuality does not exist because they feel irrationally fearful of acknowledging its existence. But, whose responsibility is it to deal with fears? Surely it is the party that has the fear that ought to ask themselves why. For example, if I have a phobia of heights, do I have a right to tell people not to build high-rise buildings? Or to tell my boss that he isn't allowed to rent office space in a high-rise building to accommodate my fears? Surely not! Surely it is for me to take ownership of my fears and deal with them instead of imposing my fears on others who are just going about their daily lives? All of this has of course created division between different groups in society. As conservatives speak out, LGBT groups fear hate crimes. All parties should have the right to speak out, but it is important to remember that we are all flesh, blood, and bone who simply want to get on with our daily lives. We can all live and let live and stop trying to tell others how to live their lives. After all, homosexuality has existed for time immemorial. Pretending it doesn't exist is akin to an ostrich burying its head in the sand. Acknowledging it exists does not mean that you will catch the gay 🙄. It is imperative to note that many who are calling for the retention of this section are from religious groups but lest we forget, Singapore is a secular state and in our multi-religious country, this secularism cannot be over-emphasised and religious groups must accept that they are not to push their religious views on society at large. After all, if they are so concerned with the so-called “gay agenda”, shouldn't the rest of us be concerned with the “religious agenda”? Besides, why bother maintaining a law that authorities have pretty much said they would never act on? The response from authorities on this issue has always been somewhat non-committal and mixed. While Prime Minister Lee Hsien Loong has indicated that no one would ever be prosecuted under this section, he also made clear that there was no need for it to be removed from the statute books. Yet, other power brokers such as Minister for Law and Home Affairs, K Shanmugam have sounded a more progressive approach. For example, in 2019, Mr Shanmugam gave the green light for a lecture by an Indian lawyer at Yale-NUS College about India’s journey towards repealing its gay sex law. Former Chief Justice Chan Sek Keong also advocated for the repeal of Section 377A saying that it was outdated, and no longer relevant in the present context, and that it discriminates specifically against males, which goes against equal treatment required in criminal law. In March this year, three appeals to challenge the constitutionality of Section 377A of the country’s Penal Code were scrapped in the High Court. With the courts saying no and authorities consistently sending the message that this law will not be repealed despite the fallacy of it still existing, why the sudden change? Perhaps, it is leader-in-waiting, Lawrence Wong's way of making an impact. The Government has also long since made it very clear that only heterosexual relationships will be prioritised. One example would be the HDB BTO scheme, which only facilitates married heterosexual couples. Yet, in its bid to promote "traditional family units", has the Government created a scheme that is open to abuse? A 27-year-old man who thought he had gamed the HDB BTO system took to social media looking for a girl to “marry on paper”. In an anonymous post to popular confessions page SGWhispers titled “HDB bTO investment plan”, the 27-year-old man wrote: “just want to ask is it possible to find a girl to marry on paper in order to buy a bto, then each of us pay 50% of the bto, with no intimate r/s involved, basically me or the girl can bring any guy/girl home”. If the system didn't have such a rigid box-ticking exercise based on such "religious/conservative morales", this type of abuse or potential abuse wouldn't exist! Meanwhile, the results of a study on the relationship between social media usage and mental health has been released by Milieu Insight on Aug 17 (Wednesday). The study covered a number of topics, including social media usage and behaviour, and made use of the Appearance Anxiety Inventory (AAI) assessment, which is utilized for measuring cognitive and behavioural aspects of body image anxiety. According to the AAI assessment scale, 17 per cent of Singapore’s adult population, defined as those ages 16 and above, are potentially at risk of having body image anxiety, with the risk being greater for females, aged between 16 and 24. These are rather concerning statistics, and one wonders if the Government has any plans to regulate this. After all, the Government has always been concerned with online content with POFMA being passed to deal with fake news – is this not in some way an extension of misleading content online having negative repercussions?