The Gay Science*

The local media, print and digital have been awash with a furious debate regarding the legal status of homosexual people. I guess, that this debate really needs my two cents worth.

It all began when MM (Minister Mentor) Lee Kuan Yew made these comments,

"You take this business of homosexuality. It raises tempers all over the world, and even in America. If in fact it is true -- and I have asked doctors this -- that you are genetically born a homosexual because that's the nature of the genetic random transmission of genes, you can't help it. So why should we criminalise it? But there's such a strong inhibition in all societies -- Christianity, Islam, even the Hindu, Chinese societies, and we are now confronted with a persisting aberration. But is it an aberration? It's a genetic variation. So what do we do? I think we pragmatically adjust, carry our people. Don't upset them and suddenly upset their sense of propriety and right and wrong. But at the same time let's not go around like this moral police do in Malaysia, barging into people's rooms and say 'khalwat'. That's not our business. So you have to take a practical, pragmatic approach to what I see is an inevitable force of time and circumstance."

And just as soon as night follows day, a deluge of responses swamped the local newspapers. One in particular by a Law Professor Yvonne Lee was littered with legal gobbledygook and scare mongering that religious types are oft to do. She painted scenarios of rampant and widespread diseases. She proclaimed warnings that their loose hedonistic lifestyles will tear the social fabric of the community. In essence, she preached, to a secular state and in a secular newspapers, about the end times she would been preached to, by her church. Another reader wrote "I conclude with words from an ancient book of wisdom 'What good will it be for a man if he gains the whole world, yet forfeits his soul?" quoting from the Book of Matthew and boldly declaring his brand of Christian morality.

Amongst the thinly veiled religious propaganda that has been flying across both sides, which i must admit, includes the so called 'scientific' side (who use too liberally the phrase, 'using scientific methods'), it seems somewhat perplexing that the person who started this whole debate should have the clearest idea on what is to be done and how it is to be done.

It puzzles me as to why the Religionists must muddy the arguments by dragging obscure and inconsistent stories from their Holy Book(s) into a matter that should be decided in a secular manner. But after all that debate, they all missed the point of Lee Kuan Yew's argument, which he asked, if the world comes to accept or tolerate homosexuality, what do we do?

"Do we go around like this moral police do in Malaysia, barging into people's rooms and say 'khalwat'?"

Or

"Do we pragmatically adjust, carry our people (without) suddenly upsetting their sense of propriety and right and wrong?"

It is plainly clear as to his views on this matter. And they also happen to be views with the most common sense.

Till next time.

P.S. The Gay Science is book by the German philosopher Fredrick Nietzsche. It is neither pro-gay or anti-gay.