Limpeh's response to Lawrence Seow's comment on Mypaper

OK people, I have been invited to write a response to Lawrence Seow's comment on the homosexual family legacy which appeared in MyPaper on the 21 February 2014. I will deal with Seow's comments shortly, but this comment came in light of Pastor Khong's current tirade of homophobic rhetoric. Yes it is section 377A all over again and once again, some people forget that Singapore is supposed to be a secular state where religion should not influence state laws. Khong can say what the hell he wants, his arguments are so flimsy they have been ripped to shreds on social media by many Singaporeans who were aghast at what he said. But let's deal with Lawrence Seow for now.

Seow claimed: SHOW me a homosexual family with many generations. I mean a same-sex couple who have adopted children, who have their own children, and so on. You cannot find one, because homosexual relationships do not last - at least, not for a lifetime.Gays and lesbians cannot have children, they must adopt. And, even when they do, their children (if gay or lesbian) cannot produce another generation. In other words, you can never find an intergenerational homosexual family, unlike great grandmas and great grandpas who have three, four or five generations of offspring.

Yes we're talking about gay families today.

Verdict: Not true - this is a flawed argument. Even in far more liberal countries in the West like Sweden, Belgium, France, Germany, the UK and Holland, laws that permit gay marriage, legalize gay adoption of children have only come into force within the last few decades. Take the UK for example, gay marriage legislation was only adopted in 2013 and we expect the first gay marriage to take place very soon on the 29 March 2014. (Oh yes those gay wedding planners are hard at work as we speak.) Before that we have had civil partnerships (akin to a civil marriage, same thing, just without the emotive word of 'marriage' being used) since 2005 and before 2005, there wasn't any legal recognition for same sex relationships. Adoption by a gay couple could only be done since 2002 when the laws concerning adoption were changed then. And that's just the UK for you - in Singapore, gays have no rights whatsoever.

So if the legal provisions for gay marriage/civil partnerships and gay couples to adopt are so new, how can you talk about 'many generations' of homosexual families? You want to know how ridiculous that sounds - let me replace the word 'homosexual family' with 'iPhone' - the first generation iPhone was released on 29 June 2007. Now in 2014, they are every and people forgot that once upon a time, we used to have clunky, chunky mobile phones that did not have a touch screen function - oh even better still, I remember the pagers from back in the early 1990s (cue the Ah Beng at the public payphone shouting "hello xiang kar pay-tjer?") and before that, when we had no such devices whatsoever. Imagine if Seow said, "Show me a family with many generations who have used iPhones." Erm hello? We didn't have iPhones until 7 years ago, isn't it ridiculous to complain that there have been no families using iPhones for generations and generations, since the 1800s? Heck, the first telephone call was made on the 10 March 1876 - before that, telephones didn't exist. So let's set the context for gay rights and gay families please with the right dates in mind.

Like iPhones, gay marriage has only come into existence fairly recently.

I'm completely leaving aside the issue of gay rights here and am shooting Seow down on his logic. Without the laws allowing homosexual couples to marry and adopt (that do exist in the West, but are actually relatively new), gay couples cannot do so - the same way until Apple launches the iPhone, you as the consumer cannot go out and purchase one and make it a vital part of your life. Given that Seow is in Singapore where gays do not even have the most basic rights (because of section 377A), then his entire argument is flawed from the beginning because gay couples are simply given no legal provision whatsoever to even begin try to form a family (the way their counterparts in the West have the right to do so). Seow's entire argument is so flawed from the start - I'm not asking him to be gay-friendly here (he can be as homophobic as he likes), I am just asking him to be logical when looking at causaility (aka cause and effect) in the context of the relationship between gay couples and the laws concerning gay rights.

And even in the West, these legal provisions have not been around for long enough for generations of gay families to develop - to test his theory fairly, we need to visit this in 2114 (that's right, 100 years from today) to see if gay marriages in the UK (available only from March 2014) have produced 'generations' of gay families. We are in uncharted waters here. Marriage as a concept is constantly evolving with society - let's have a look at what the bible claims marriage should be, here's a useful diagram. If you're a Christian and you don't agree with what is stated below, then that makes you a hypocrite and a bad Christian. That's religion for you - deal with it.

Seow claimed: In other words, you can never find an intergenerational homosexual family, unlike great grandmas and great grandpas who have three, four or five generations of offspring.

Verdict: Flawed argument - this is based on the assumption that straight families do have inter-generational families where they can trace their ancestors. There are plenty of cases of straight people who do not get married or get married then either choose not to have children or are unable to conceive (for medical reasons,  for financial reasons or other personal reasons). Not all straight people have children - it is a personal choice.

Parenthood is not for everyone.

Besides, have you actually tried this in practice - tracing your ancestry? I have and boy did I struggle. I found out in 2012 that I am in fact Eurasian - that's right, after having been brought up in a traditional and stereotypical Singaporean-Chinese family, I went for a DNA test only to find out that I am in fact mixed. What I then did (with my siblings' help) was embark on a mission to try to find out where the European blood came from and unfortunately, my investigative efforts were fruitless. I narrowed the Eurasian link down to either my mother's father or my father's mother and goodness me, you would be amazed just how little my parents knew about their very own parents' ancestry. So many of my questions were answered with, "I don't know, it was a very long time ago. Back then, people didn't keep records properly, I don't know where to find out about this." It was a very frustrating process.

Sure, I have grandparents, great-grandparents, great-great-grandparents etc - I wasn't manufactured in a test tube in a lab; biologically, I was the product of natural human birth between a man and a woman. But in practice, even with the best efforts of myself and my parents, we were able to find out surprisingly little about my late grandparents (never mind their parents and grandparents and so on). I challenge you my dear readers to try to do the same - how much can you tell me about your grandparents and your great-grandparents?

Limpeh is officially Eurasian.

My point is simple: in practice, human beings live in a present, we are concerned with the here and now. We think about the jobs we're doing or want, the relationships we have, the people around us. We are most concerned with the challenges we are facing, we think about the future in terms of our ambitions and our goals, we think about the good things we'd like to have in our lives and how we can make those things happen. We may be focused on getting a promotion at work, increasing the profits of our business, or maybe if you're younger, trying to get he best possible results at school or university. We set ourselves goals - both in our professional lives and in our personal lives and these goals drive us in our everyday lives. That is the reason my parents didn't bother to find out all that much about their late parents because they were focused on the present rather than dwelling on the past.

In fact, until I asked them those questions about their parents, nobody in my family had raised those questions. My only regret is that I didn't do that DNA tests years ago when at least my grandmothers were still alive so I could actually try to get some answers but now that all four grandparents are dead, well I don't know if I will ever get the answers I was after (as to where my European blood came from). That's a shame, really.

Limpeh has European blood.

So even if you do have grandparents, great-grandparents and great-great-grandparents and so on - what (if any) is the point of knowing about them if they have no practical impact on your everyday lives? In my family, my parents help take care of my disabled nephew - that is a very practical way intergenerational care giving works: this enables my sister and her husband to continue working and pursuing their very successful professional careers under such challenging circumstances. But my (possibly Eurasian) maternal grandfather died before I was even born - what practical impact did he have on my life so far? None and until I started tracing my ancestry, I have not taken any interest in him. And mind you, if I turned out to be like 99% Chinese in my DNA test, then I probably would not have taken any interest in my late grandfather either.

So let's get real here - what is the practical purpose of having any kind of link to your dead ancestors, unless of course, they have left you something tangible like a large estate or a huge trust fund for you to inherit? Or at least an inspiring and interesting story would be nice to begin with... Not everyone has parents and grandparents who are rich - or have even led a life worthy of remembering. Some people have bad parents and that's just the way life is.

Did your parents or grandparents leave you some money to inherit?

Seow claimed: Even though homosexuals have been around for centuries, they do not contribute to lasting family legacies

Verdict: Not true. It is time for us to look at the definition of the word 'legacy':

1. Law. a gift of property, especially personal property, as money, by will; a bequest.
2. Anything handed down from the past, as from an ancestor or predecessor: the legacy of ancient Rome

This is in fact an active process not a passive one - ie. if you don't do anything to ensure that you have something tangible to pass on to the next generation, the next generation gets nothing. Loads of straight people do not contribute to any kind of lasting family legacies simply because they achieve surprisingly little in their life times - they do not hold down a job or even if they do they are confined to menial mundane tasks and barely make ends meet. In any case, when gay people dies, if they have no children, they would usually end up leaving their estate to their family. Thus by that token, they can indeed contribute to lasting family legacies from a financial point of view. In any case, I think Lawrence Seow doesn't understand what the word legacy means - he probably doesn't realize that it is really referring quite specifically about money: cold, hard cash - not children per se. It's all about the money.

You wanna leave a legacy? Show me the money. 

I have a good friend Sam whose father spent most of his life in jail and she remembers visiting him in jail when she was a child. As an adult, she has no relationship with him and they are not in touch. He played no part in her life and was not even at her wedding. She was effectively brought up by her mother and her father died recently. In terms of any kind of 'legacy', Sam got absolutely nothing from her father and when we talked about it recently, she used the lyrics of the song 'Papa Was A Rollin; Stone' to describe her relationship with her late father.

Papa was a rollin' stone
Wherever he laid his hat was his home
And when he died, all he left us was alone. 

Here's my favourite version by gay superstar George Michael from 1991 in the Youtube video below - and I am including the hyperlink here as I suspect this article is going to get picked up by a Singapore website who always forget to include my embedded Youtube videos. (Yes TRS, I am talking about you.) 

The fact is leaving a legacy is hard work, oh yes it's bloody hard work. It means more than just having children - the way Sam's father did. You could have children, then turn out to be a bad parent (as in Sam's father's case). If Seow wanted to talk about leaving a legacy, then it is not just 'bad parents' like Sam's father who don't leave a legacy. What about all those poor straight parents who have barely make ends meet, never mind leave a 'legacy' to their children? My friend JDH's father recently died after a long illness, not only did he saddle JDH will a lot of expensive medical bills to pay towards the end, he didn't have a penny to his name on his death bed as every bit of cash he had left was used for medical bills. JDH even had to borrow money just to pay for the funeral. Yet JDH's father was a normal, straight, heterosexual man who just happened to be a poor man who died of cancer - he certainly didn't leave a legacy. 

A legacy doesn't have to be handed directly from parent to child - a legacy can be made to the wider public; for example, it is fairly common for rich people to leave part of their estate to either a charity or a school/university that they attended. Thus the people to benefit from that legacy are not at all related by blood to the rich person who has made that legacy gift. Take Bill Gates for example: he has created the Bill and Melinda Gates foundation (which currently has over US$33 billion) and participates in many activities such as the treatment and eradication of malaria, tuberculosis, and AIDS have made a significant difference in the lives of many of the world’s poorest populations. You wanna talk about leaving a legacy - now that's the kind of legacy we should all aim to leave behind! 

In any case, such an grand act of charity can be done by anyone - gay or straight, single or married, childless or with children. Big gay icon Elton John's legacy to the world isn't just his adopted children - his legacy would be his music and also the Elton John AIDS foundation, a charity that has done so much in terms of preventing the spread of HIV/AIDS and supporting those with the illness. Just having children doesn't necessarily mean you're leaving a legacy - oh no, it takes a lot more than that to leave a legacy - giving a baby the gift of life can be a curse if you're only going to be a terrible parent who subjects the poor child to years of suffering and abuse. 

Seow claimed: They cannot trace their roots, because they end before they even begin.

Verdict: Not true. LOL, where do I even begin? When I found out that I am indeed Eurasian (after my DNA test), my two sisters got equally excited about tracing our ancestry to find out where the European blood came from. Now my two sisters are straight, I'm gay/borderline bisexual but our sexual orientations had absolutely no impact on our ability to trace our roots for the simple reason that my parents simply did not take any interest in their parents' and grandparents' origins when they were alive - such information just wasn't important or relevant to my parents. Now that our grandparents are all dead, the chances of us trying to get any useful information is virtually nil.

You be amazed how little information we found on my late maternal grandfather.

So I worked together with my two straight, heterosexual sisters to try to discover our roots -  my straight, heterosexual sister share my Eurasian roots; so how can Seow claim that my roots "end before they even begin?" We are three siblings within the same family. Can you see how easily Seow's theory falls apart at this point? How does the fact that I like to have sex with other men affect my ability to trace my roots - when the deciding factor really is how meticulous my parents (who are straight, for the record) were when it comes to recording and storing information pertaining to their parents and grandparents? My father in particular didn't even have a single piece of paperwork about his parents today - he doesn't even have a copy of his own birth certificate.

Is Seow forgetting that gay people tend to have straight parents? The fact that I am gay doesn't mean that I have parachuted into Singapore in 1976 as a baby from some distant planet on the opposite end of the solar system. Heck, never mind straight parents, I had crazy strict (abusive in fact) parents as well who are religious on top of all that. Whether I choose to have sex with men or women (or if I remain chaste) doesn't change the fact that my parents are who they are. Regardless of what this Seow claims, I certainly have roots - Eurasian roots in Singapore and Malaysia to be precise. Seow makes no sense whatsoever, his argument is not just homophobic, it is plain illogical. 

I may live in Europe now but I have roots in Singapore and Malaysia.

Seow claimed: Homosexuals do not contribute to a strong, resilient family (and they never have).

Verdict: Not true. Again, this is not based on evidence. Let's look at the situation in Singapore where children tend to live with their parents all the way into adulthood - let me tell you the story with my friend BC in Singapore. BC has two siblings, both of whom are married with children and are extremely busy raising their children and working in stressful careers. BC is gay and unmarried, he is spared the burden of adulthood and after his father died, his mother found herself at a lost. She used to spend all her time with her late husband but without him, she didn't have a much of a social life either as she used to spend a lot of her free time caring for her grandchildren.

However, with her husband dead and her grandchildren grown up (teenagers don't need baby sitting and didn't care to hang around grandma much), she found herself with a lot of free time on her hands and no one to spend it with. That was where BC stepped in as her primary carer - the gay son spent time with his mother, took her out shopping, had meals with her in nice places, even take her on foreign holidays and ensured that she was never left feeling bored or lonely. BC's siblings had to work very long hours to make ends meet (bringing up children in Singapore is expensive business) whilst BC could afford to work more sensible hours and have a better work life balance as he didn't have the financial responsibility of bringing up two children in a place like Singapore. BC's siblings barely have any time for their mother and hire maids and tuition teachers to ensure that their children supervised. BC's mother was deemed academically inadequate to be of any help to her teenage grandchildren and whilst she used to supervise their homework in primary school, that role is now taken by a tuition teacher. Their children are also enrolled in a range of activities from sports to music to keep them occupied in a safe and productive environment whilst their parents are busy working super long hours in the office just to earn enough money for their families.

BC's nieces and nephews are kept busy at school and after school with activities.

If BC has been a straight parent like his siblings, he would have absolutely no time for his mother and she would probably lead quite a miserable and lonely existence in her final years. But having a gay son turned out to be the best thing for BC's mother as she now has someone in her life who understands her, cares for her and has time for her. It is not that her other children don't love her or don't care about her - but between pursuing their careers and being parents themselves, they just don't have any time left for her at all. 

BC is playing a vital role as the gay son who is going to be his mother's carer as she gets older and older - the rest of his family are simply disinterested in playing a more active role in BC's mother life: they are just too busy. In fact BC isn't just "contributing to a strong, resilient" family, he is the last piece of the puzzle holding his extended family together! Seow is assuming that gays have no role to play in any family - but in BC's case, it demonstrates clearly that whilst BC chooses not to have any children of his own, he is willing and able to "contribute to a strong, resilient family" by taking up the vital role of care-giving for his aged mother - a role that his straight siblings won't take. 

Is BC's mother blessed to have a gay son?

So it's my term to ask an important question: what is your legacy? What kind of footprint do you want to leave on this world? What can you point to at the end of your life and say, "hey, I did that, that's my achievement, I feel proud I managed to do that." I hope you find something to answer that question and feel great when you look back at the things you have managed to do. I really don't like the idea of people claiming that their legacy is their children - that's so lame. After all, you have absolutely no idea what your children will turn out to be like, your child may be born with a learning disability and never be able to hold down a job - it is a massive gamble you're taking when you bring a child into the world. Even if your children are not disabled, what if they turn out to be just barely average or below average? If you really have such a desire to nurture the next generation, why not train to become a teacher where you can spend all your time nurturing your students - why limit yourself to just your children? At least as a teacher, you can turn around and say, "I spent four decades nurturing my students in the classroom." Not a bad legacy if you ask me.

But there you go - different people leave different kinds of legacy. Gay Russian composer Tchaikovsky is instantly remembered for his music - yes he had a sham marriage then (times were different then and it was hard to be openly gay in Russia then, mind you Russia is still as homophobic today) and he never had any children; but does it matter? What do you want to be remembered for: your intellectual brilliance (I'm thinking of playwrights, authors, composers, painters, great actors, scientists, inventors, presidents etc) or the fact that you had children? Heck anyone can have children, it's just sex - it is what happen when people get drunk, fool around and forget to put on a condom. There's nothing to boast about this ability to create a baby especially when even animals (dogs, cats, guinea pigs, goats, birds, mice, insects etc) can procreate as well. Why this focus on procreation rather than brain power? 

Even these puffins know how to procreate.

Is it because Lawrence Seow is shockingly lacking in the 'brain power' department? Is he one of those people who are just, well, for want of a better word, not particularly clever? Certainly, given how flawed his argument is, it is evident to me that he is, well... for want of a better word, not particularly intelligent I'm afraid. Is this why he is focusing so much on procreation - the one thing that he can do (and probably has done, given how he is so obsessed with it). Otherwise, what kind of person would value procreation over brain power?

That's the gutter press for you - MyPaper certainly lowered the tone of their paper by publishing such a letter. It's not that I have a problem with Seow's vehement homophobia - quite the contrary. He can be homophobic but I expected a more cogent argument. Spout bullshit like that and be prepared to be taken apart on social media. As usual, feel free to leave a comment below and let me know what you think about this issue. Thank you very much for reading.