Many bloggers took PM Lee to task for one of the article recently.
Apparently one of the journalist asked PM Lee about gay marriage in Singapore and he said that Singapore is not ready for it because we are conservative society. He also noted that “We do not harass them or discriminate against them” and also that most Singaporeans would not want LGBT community to the the tone for Singapore society. He, of course, warned against pushing the agenda too hard in case of strong pushback and that the views are very entrenched and that people get angrier as they discuss it.
Personally, I feel that journalist had asked the wrong question. Of course, PM Lee is right that we are not ready for gay marriage because we are jumping the gun on this. With penal code 377a still looming over the heads of gay men and an unofficial policy of non positive portrayal of “gay lifestyle”, we still have a long way to go before we discuss about gay marriage. So I feel that some folks are being unfair to PM Lee on this because the question was the wrong one to ask.
Now me saying that Singapore is not ready for gay marriage doesn’t mean that if today, the government decides to make marriage equality a real thing, I will not support it. However, with 377a still looming there is a lot of to be concerned with then just marriage.
You know, I love it whenever our leaders says we are not ready for something. They are treating us like some children who couldn’t deal with real issues in a mature manner, in other words, you are not ready to ride a bike, not ready to hike up Mt Kinabalu, not ready to go toilet on your own… you get the idea. Of course, we know this is all political speech because Singaporeans were not ready for casinos (in fact many people opposed it), not ready for over-liberal migrant policies, bubble-gum ban and no alcohol after 10 pm. We are also not ready for a non-Chinese PM, even I though I have not issues if Tharman or Tarmugi were made PM, instead of another useless military Chinese elite MP. My question is whether the Singapore’s “not readiness” is a problem with Singaporean or something deliberately engineered by our ruling party keeping them immature.
It is pretty scary to hear or read that our ruling party and media have adopted the conservative Christian’s political language. Terms like “gay agenda” and “gay lifestyle” is primarily used by Christian right groups to promote and keep discrimination, hatred and divide society and used to in political engagement particular in the West. The successs of infiltration of such language tell us that either the conservative Christians are strongly in control of our government or by proxy (aka rich and powerful persons) or our government don’t put too much thought into such decisions which impacts thousands of families and people. In the Christian political arena, “gay agenda” and “gay lifestyle” has a negative conoctation and this is meant to be so. “Gay agenda” is meant to be insidious and militant which is why we often hear the govt warning of not “pushing the agenda” too much. “Gay lifestyle” is meant to be hedonistic and irresponsible which is why there is a general displeasure at “promoting gay lifestyle”. And the problem even extends to people who supports gay equality, using “gay lifestyle” to support gay equality. A gay agenda do exists (but I saw discuss this some other times) but not what the govt and anti-gayers make it out to be. The gay lifestyle doesn’t exists, just as a non-gay lifestyle, a bi lifestyle or a trans lifestyle doesn’t exists.
Lastly, what makes me more pissed is the govt blaming the victims for upsetting the abusers. Reading what some #wearwhite people got to say about gay folks and the death threats and hatred meted out in groups like WeAreAgainstPinkDot, it is no wonder some people are angry. I said it before, we are trying to mend a divided society, those against equality are the ones that the govt need to deal with, because they want to keep society divided and keep families divided. The way the govt handles this is like a domestic violence where the drunk husband keeps beating the wife and the lawyers tells the wife not to talk about divorce or file police report because it will cause the husband to be angrier… this is exactly what PM Lee meant in this reply.
Yes, Singapore is not ready of gay marriage because basic equality is not even in place and we need to elect a government with more balls to protect it citizens than the current one.
Source: https://saltwetfish.wordpress.com
