Part 4: Stepping out of my very gay echo chamber to address the other side of the divide

Hi guys, it's never comfortable to step out of my liberal, progressive and gay echo chamber on social media where I am treated to all things gay and fabulous celebrating equality and diversity but of course I don't want to pretend that the other side of the argument doesn't exist. I'm not one to pick fights on the internet because life is too short, most people out there just wanna scream at the top of their lungs (well, online anyway) what their point of view is and they are not at all prepared to let anyone else challenge their point of view. Most of the time, our views are never challenged as we stick to people who would share our opinions, thus a liberal gay like me would never ever set foot in a homophobic church where the pastor is spewing anti-gay rhetoric and it seems like the only time that our paths might cross is online and usually, both sides refuse to back down, it descends into childish name-calling and insults and very little is accomplished through such exchanges. However, one of my readers did send me a link to read and given that I did tutor my nephew through his A level economics last year, I am going to mark this essay on the topic of the repeal of S377A like a teacher and oh boy, this teacher is merciless. By all means, please do express your anti-gay homophobic views on your blog but have the decency to come up with a persuasive, cogent argument that makes sense. So without further ado, I shall invite you to read the piece which I am about to tear apart through this hyperlink. There are eight points to deal with in this post so I shall show you why the writer (who remained anonymous) was wrong at least eight times. By the way, hi I'm Alex, I'm gay, I'm not anonymous and I'm about to put on my teacher's hat just for you today so please sit down and pay attention. 

1. Why did PM Lee announce a repeal without a robust parliamentary debate? 

Ironically, the writer did answer his own question - the government's hands were forced by the courts because of the numerous challenges, most recently in February 2022 which made the law unenforceable in its entirety. Thus the repeal is a natural progression of the legal process and if the writer thought that forcing it through a parliamentary debate would somehow derail the legal process, then this shows that the writer has a very poor understanding of how the legal system works in Singapore. Personally, I'm not a fan of the legal system in Singapore but you don't get to cry foul just because you didn't get the result you wanted. This does remind me very much of the way Trump falsely claimed that the 2020 election was stolen from him just because he lost; it also reminded me of that time my nephew was confronted with a question about the South Korean economy on one of the exam test papers I went through with him, he protested, "but my teacher never taught me about the South Korean economy in school!" So I rolled my eyes and said, "tough shit, the examiners have the right to pick any case study they want and you're supposed to apply what you have learnt. Now stop complaining and start looking at the first question because you're not going to get to ask the examiner to only ask questions that your teacher has already given you the answers to - that's not how the exam works." By the same token, the PM Lee and the PAP have followed the rules (well, the rules that they have set since they are the only ruling party) and if you don't like what they have done, then maybe you shouldn't have voted them into power time and time again with such a big majority that they can do whatever they like on issues like this without any kind of parliamentary debate. 

Essentially, what the writer wants is a repeat of what happened in 2007 when the issue was debated in the parliament and the outcome then was that the status quo of the S377A was kept as it was but it was agreed not to be actively enforced. I remember that debate well because MP Siew Kum Hong actually interviewed me and used my personal story as an example of the brain drain in his speech to parliament then. But goodness me, that was a good 15 years ago and so much has changed since then - so simply re-running the same process that took place back in 2007 would not deliver the same result as this is mostly because of the way democracy works. Oh democracy sucks when it doesn't give you what you want, right? Here's a quick geography lesson for you: Singapore has a rapidly ageing population and the older you are, the more likely you are to be more anti-gay, conservative and pro S377A. In contrast, the younger generation of Singaporeans have grown up with the internet and consumed a lot more media from more gay friendly countries in the West, as well as South Korea and Japan. So there is a direct correlation between young and being gay-friendly in Singapore, which is also the case in most other countries. So in the last 15 years, you have lost quite a lot of older voters through death - yup, older people do die off eventually, that's no easy way to dance around the issue. The biggest change in the last 15 years therefore is that we have lost a big chunk of older, more conservative, more homophobic older Singaporeans and there has been a shift in attitudes. Thus such a debate may be very interesting actually as it would have to contend with a very different Singapore compared to 2007 - but regardless, you're not getting that debate.

2. Comparing S377A to the Tudung issue. 

PM Lee also pushed a decision to let female workers wear the tudung (head scarf) at work last year and so the writer felt that PM Lee was trying to do the same by making comparisons in the way both issues were potentially sensitive topics. The writer then tries to provoke his readers by claiming that whilst wearing a tudung has no bearing on morality or health, gay sex acts (and I quote) "like anal sex are well known high-risk sexual activities which could harm both the individuals indulging in it as well as society's public health". Let's deal with that erroneous claim and it does sound like the writer (I've assumed it was a man, it might be a really uptight woman) has never ever had anal sex before so allow me to enlighten you. Did you know that a lot of straight couples have anal sex too? It is a common genre in mainstream straight porn (between men and women) and if it poses such a health risk, then why not argue to criminalize all anal sex including for women who choose to indulge in it? The writer uses a link to an American website Wedmd (which I have included here as well), to justify why this is such a very high risk activity but even in that American website, it does acknowledge that some women do indulge in anal sex. A big part of the piece is dedicated to 'anal sex safety' and it felt like it was written for a virgin who has never had sex before whilst for an older gay man like me reading it, I just rolled my eyes and thought, "isn't this all common sense? Sexually active adults would know all this, it's only the virgins who have no clue." Basically, anal sex is only potentially risky to your health if you have no clue what you're doing, so please allow me to use an analogy to make my point about how ignorance can make a very normal activity potentially hazardous to your health. 

I am a cyclist, I commute short distances across London on a bike and typically my journeys are under 30 minutes. Does that activity carry a certain amount of risk? Yes it does, there are accidents involving cyclists every year resulting in injury and death. I do get a bit nervous when approaching a very busy junction especially if I see big buses and trucks, knowing that they may not notice a cyclist in their rear view mirror. Thus I always allow ample time for my journey, knowing that I may have to drop back and allow a truck to pass me. Though I am appalled by the behaviour of a certain group of cyclists who are the delivery couriers (who typically deliver food but they also deliver other items). Just yesterday, I saw a delivery courier on his phone (yes he was looking at his phone whilst cycling) and he cycled right into the path of oncoming traffic; luckily, the driver then noticed the distracted cyclist and honked at him, averting a really horrible accident. On one hand, I feel sorry for such cyclist couriers, they have a tough job, they get paid peanuts and they are under a lot of pressure to meet very tight deadlines regardless of weather conditions. Imagine having to cycle across town when it is pouring with rain, just to make a delivery. Perhaps that distracted cyclist I saw was checking the address of his next delivery and he was not chatting with his friends, but nonetheless, his reckless behaviour had put not just his own life in danger but also those of other motorists and cyclists on that road at that moment. Thus in this case study we have a clear case of a cyclist's reckless behaviour putting his own life at risk, how should we then respond to such a situation then, given that it does happen every single day in London? Would you then ban cycling altogether in the city? 

Do you classify cycling as such a high risk activity and ban it outright because there are some cyclists (just like the one I witnessed) who make very careless and dangerous mistakes? Or do we deal with the dangerous behaviour whilst acknowledging the fact that most cyclists do want to stay alive and don't want to get run over by a truck, so for the majority of cyclists, we are very sensible when we cycle on busy roads in central London. If you could stop being squeamish about sex (and anal sex in particular) for a moment, the parallel is clear: it is not sex per se that is the problem, but it is people who do not practice safer sex, who do not know how to take the necessary precautions to protect themselves. Think about a 13 year old boy who gets a bicycle on his birthday, then excitedly goes out cycling on the main road in front of his house totally oblivious to the dangers - that's an accident waiting to happen. By the very same token, when young people have their first sexual encounters, if they don't know what they are doing, they can make silly mistakes that could expose them to diseases and unwanted pregnancies. There are two ways to respond to this situation: the squeamish, religious parents would scream, "only abstinence will work! We believe in abstinence! Strictly no sex before marriage!" That's what my parents preached as well but a lot of young people (including myself) decided that we weren't going to go down that road; it is pretty obvious why my mother preached abstinence - after all, she married a man she didn't love out of desperation as she was from a very poor family. All they have done was fight all these years and I can't even imagine how torturous sex must have been with a person you neither love nor are attracted to at all and I supposed that is why my mother preaches abstinence as her experience with sex has been totally dismal. 

The alternative approach is to have proper sex education to prepare young people who are going to be sexually active - this obviously isn't the same as encouraging young people to become sexually active before they are ready, but if we accept the inevitable that many young people are going to have sex regardless of how much their prudish, religious parents go on and on about abstinence, then surely, educating young people about safer sex to reduce their exposure to diseases and unwanted pregnancies would be the most sensible thing to do. Trying to use S377A to regulate private sexual behaviour and stop people from having anal sex isn't the answer, but then you try reasoning with these religious right wing extremists who pride themselves in being virgins, they are so clueless when it comes to sex and I don't even know how one is supposed to start a conversation about anal sex with a religious virgin like that. Using their kind of logic, they would ban all bicycles and make cycling illegal, instead of dealing the problematic issue of irresponsible cyclists who indulge in reckless behabiour. Thus let me put it to you in plain English: there's a lot of similarity between cycling and anal sex. Do it incorrectly, then you can make mistakes and get hurt - but if you were to apply some common sense and practice it very safely, then you could enjoy the activity without any impact on your health. But let me address the pink elephant in the room: the writer has used the fact that monkey pox is spreading amongst the gay community in the West to illustrate how gay men having sex could exacerbate a health crisis. However, technically speaking, monkey pox isn't really an STD (sexually transmitted disease) the same way you won't classify chicken pox as an STD by the same token.

Monkey pox is spread when there is close physical contact between two people the same way chicken pox is spread say, in a classroom environment where the students have close contact in a relatively confined space. The monkey pox virus doesn't discriminate between male or female, gay or straight humans - we will all get infected the same way. Thus monkey pox isn't circulating because of gay sex, it isn't some kind of divine punishment created to punish gay men for having sex. The spread of monkey pox amongst the gay community happens when men have multiple sexual partners and thus it is the act of promiscuity that is causing and facilitating the spread. Hence it isn't gay sex that's causing the spread of monkey pox, it is promiscuity and by that token, that applies to both gay and straight people who have multiple sex partners facilitating the spread of monkey pox. Thus this writer has tried to insinuate that is some kind of link between monkey pox and gay sex when really, it isn't even an STD to begin with; but how do you even start to police the act of promiscuity as it is not illegal per se, but then some religious people would find such behaviour sinful and objectionable. In any case, simply keeping S377A in the law isn't going to keep monkey pox out of Singapore; after all monkey pox is already in some very homophobic countries such as Nigeria, Ghana and the UAE where gay sex is totally illegal. What we need in a health emergency is more education and a swift vaccination programme to stop the spread, rather than this mass hysteria by the religious right who have no idea what the heck monkey pox is or how it is spread: we need to leave medical health to the doctors and keep religion out of it. Surely we have learnt our lesson from the Covid-19 pandemic?

As for the claim that "a large majority of Singaporeans consider male homosexual acts immoral", well firstly I dispute whether that is true or not given that we have never had a referendum to truly measure this, but Singapore is a proper democracy, we're not governed by mob-rule. You don't get to decide that something is immoral and then punish that act of immorality. On my way to the gym today, I walked past a bus terminus where some of the bus drivers on break were chatting amongst themselves. One of the bus drivers said, "I have five children, the youngest one is just six months old." I took one look at the bus driver and fought hard to contain my reaction - that working class man is so poor, doing a very lowly paid job and when people like him have that many children, he is condemning his children to a life of poverty as there's no way he can provide for such a large family. So I find what he is doing very immoral because his children are innocent, yet they will suffer so much poverty because of this bus driver's bizarre and irrational decision to have so many children despite earning so little. Are the actions of this bus driver immoral? Yes I think so. But are they criminal? If it is a crime, then there needs to be a victim or in this case, five victims (his children) but somehow, a poor man having five children is completely legal. However, if I have consensual sex behind closed doors with another man and because I am a rational, progressive sexually active adult who knows what he is doing, I practice safer sex to protect my health and the health of the other guy, then there is no victim. In that case, in the complete absence of a victim, how can it be a crime? 

The fact that someone like a religious bigot may find the thought of two men having sex offensive and immoral doesn't make it a crime, the same way I may have passed judgment on that bus driver who has five children but my opinion and disapproval of his actions doesn't make me a victim of his actions and no matter how disgusted I may be by his actions, the rule of law isn't based on my feelings have been hurt or offended. Thus for the Christians who are offended by the fact that gay men have sex with each other, I say to them: deal with it, the world doesn't revolve around you and your feelings don't actually matter that much in the eyes of the law. That is how we end up with situations which leave us feeling uneasy when we witness something that we would consider immoral - that might be a Christian person who considers gay sex between men immoral or it might be me judging that poor bus driver for having five children. In a complex, diverse society, we have a whole range of opinions when it comes to morality, some people may think there's absolutely nothing wrong with a bus driver having five or more children as that's his right to have a family whereas others like me will view his actions as immoral at best because of the poverty he will be subjecting his children to. In the absence of consensus, we need the law to draw the line as to what constitutes a crime and what doesn't. Thus a government's pragmatic priority is to focus on real crimes that do result in victims rather than issues of 'morality'; you only have to look at what the vast majority of rich, civilized democracies out there from New Zealand to Japan to France and realize that's the same path they have taken on the issue of morality and the law: a secular balance with common sense. 

3. Isn't the existing compromise on not enforcing S377A already sufficient?

So the writer claims that S377A shouldn't be repealed as the majority of Singaporeans still feel that sex between men is 'always/almost always wrong' and he cited a survey by the NUS to support this point. I question the methodology of this survey in the first instance because the title of the study was "religion, morality and conservatism in Singapore". If you start with a title like that, you're going to find evidence that backs your theme rather than consider evidence that proves the opposite. In any case, this study was done back in 2019, a good three years before the repeal of S377A and if you're a bunch of graduate students in NUS trying to please your professors and secure funding for your next research project, you are hardly going to come up with something controversial that calls for a major change in government policy - no, this is nothing short of a piece of research that endorses the PAP's decisions on the matter. In any case, this study interviewed only 4,015 people and that sample size is meant to represent the views of a country with a population of 5.7 million people. Thus it is very easy to produce the kind of results you want by tweaking the demographics of the people you interview: so if I needed to include younger Singaporeans as part of the survey but I want to make sure they are homophobic, I will just go to one of those vehemently homophobic churches in Singapore to interview the youth there, so I can tick the box and say, "see, I have included some younger people in this survey" whilst still getting the results I need. Of course, the identity of the people who take part in this kind of survey is always confidential because participants have to be ensured that their details would never be shared with third party and that promise would also help produce a far more honest response. Thus this survey is actually highly unreliable as evidence, it is a rather shoddy piece of research. 

One can never rely on such social research studies to create public policy, imagine if I had a survey where I went out to interview 4,000 Singaporeans on whether or not they should pay income tax and how much. I could easily ask questions like if ordinary low to middle income Singaporeans should pay more or less income tax and if that tax revenue should come from the ultra-rich and big corporations in Singapore. Almost everyone in that survey would agree that they should pay virtually no tax and instead we should let the very rich and the big corporations fill that gap in the government's coffers. Does the government use such surveys to form their public policy? Of course not, nobody wants or likes to pay their taxes but the government has to be like a strict parent when it comes to enforcing the collection of income tax, even if it is an unpopular law that citizens begrudgingly obey. Thus we really need to leave the governing of the country to the experts who understand public policy, who can see the big picture, rather than try to reduce it to a kind of popularity contest where you keep trying to please the masses by responding to their requests. I'd like to think that the people working in the government are experts who can do what is best for the country and if you remember the bus driver with five children that I talked about a little earlier - yeah, the average, ordinary man in the street is dumb, irrational and unsuccessful. That's why we have a tiny minority of people who are rich millionaires whilst the majority of people out there are just getting by. So do you want to let the majority of ordinary, average idiots make the rules or do you want to leave it to the experts? You need the wise leaders to save the idiots from their own stupidity, not let them make the rules!

In any case, the previous compromise didn't really please anyone: the LGBT community and their allies wanted a lot more gay rights and wanted to get rid of S377A, whilst the anti-gay religious groups were not happy either at the way S377A served no real purpose as it was simply ignored and not enforced. The government was in a no-win situation with that kind of ambiguity which made the Singaporean justice system look bad. So what the government had to do in this case was to pick a side as you can't please everyone on an issue like that, there will be winners and losers - trying to sit on the fence by forcing a compromise is an untenable position to take. The writer claims that the gays in Singapore would not need to live in fear of S377A being enforced - yeah as if gay people were actually happy with that. Gay people want to live in a society where they have equal rights with straight people, where they have the right to love someone on the same gender. Clearly, the writer thinks of gays as second class citizens who should be grateful that straight people are willing to tolerate their presence, well I say, fuck that, as a gay person I certainly don't agree with that and thankfully, I live in country where I do have those equal rights as a gay man. It does seem like the writer has never ever spoken to a gay person before and has no idea just how dissatisfied the gays were with this mess compromise with the S377A situation. In any case, it isn't just the gays who were pissed off with the compromise, it was a whole segment of more liberal, progressive Singaporeans who feel that it was long overdue that Singapore joined the rest of the civilized world in getting rid of this relic from the colonial past when the former imperial ruler (the UK) is now a liberal gay-friendly country. 

4. The government's stance on private acts between consenting adults.

The writer claims that the government's stance on not criminalizing private acts between consensual adults as a slippery slope which can open the door for adults to commit crimes behind closed doors, such as drug dealing or the sale of human organs. This is utterly ridiculous because we have to look at what constitutes a crime and what doesn't - as explained, if two consenting gay men have sex behind closed doors, there are no victims as a result of that act. But in the case of drug dealing or the sale of human organs, there are clearly victims as a result of those illegal acts. A recent example of the government criminalizing a person doing an act in private with no victims is when the police arrested Titus Low, a Singaporean porn star who has made a ton of money performing on Onlyfans. Whilst the law in Singapore states that it is illegal to create porn in Singapore, Low argued that he isn't harming or hurting anyone in the process since his content is only available to paid subscribers on the Onlyfans website. Many people questioned what good would come from spending all that time, energy and effort to persecute Low when he hasn't actually done any harm to anyone (and he has made his fans very happy indeed). Surely it is simply a question of being pragmatic: the amount of resources the police have is finite and needs to be allocated efficiently to deal with the crimes where there are indeed victims who suffer as a result of those crimes. That's why S377A was never enforced because of the absence of victims - therein lies the difference. One needs to understand what actually constitutes a crime and it's not your precious feelings getting hurt. 

5. Does the definition of marriage need protecting in Singapore? 

Let's be very clear about this: the writer is very homophobic and doesn't ever want to see a day where we can have gay marriage in Singapore. Why does the definition of marriage need protecting in the first place? It's not as if the gays and the liberals are stopping straight people from getting married like they have done so for centuries. If you were to look at the many countries where gay marriage is legal, then nothing has changed for the straight people who want to get married. This is a complete red herring as traditional marriage in Singapore is under threat but not from the gays! The real reason why fewer people are getting married and having kids is because of the work culture in Singapore where adults are forced to put in insane hours, often as much as 72 hours a week (the 996 culture: 9 am to 9 pm, 6 days a week). If you're spending that much time at work, where are you going to find the time to have any kind of social life, never mind go on a date? You barely have enough time to sleep and those who adhere to the 996 work culture are often very sleep deprived. If they got a day off, they would probably prefer to spend that day off in bed catching up with sleep rather than finding a date. Under those circumstances, how are you supposed to have children? It's then left to the grandparents and the domestic helpers to bring up the kids, which seems utterly pointless to me because you shouldn't get a pet if you have no time to take care of the pet and the same principle applies to children. How would using gays as the scapegoat fix this problem then? It wouldn't and if you're sincere about doing something about the marriage situation, then fix this terrible work culture - you need to give Singaporeans more free time to date, get married and have children. 

6. The rabbit hole about the interpretation act and women's charter.

I am shaking my head as I am losing my patience here. This is the reason why I don't venture out of my comfortable echo chamber as I hate dealing with stupid people. This is how people on the far right use scaremongering to try to create fear to make a point but you're dealing with Singapore here, you're from Singapore but you write as if you don't know a thing about Singapore. Singapore is hardly the most liberal place in Asia and you're talking about a slippery slope without any evidence of there being one? How about basing an argument on facts and evidence rather than your prejudice and hatred for a change? As much as it pains me to say this, Singapore is still vehemently homophobic and I hardly think the PAP is going to rush through a whole range of pro-gay laws that we have in the West. It seems the writer has gone down a rabbit hole when there is none, so let's swiftly move on to the next point which is far more interesting. 

7. S377A, education and the MOE in Singapore. 

This is when I had a bloody good laugh. Okay so this writer is moaning about how the MOE no longer has to teach students that gay sex is illegal in Singapore after the repeal of S377A - like where do I even begin? Sex education has been at best patchy and extremely limited in Singaporean schools, at worst non-existent. In my time, it was pretty much limited to the girls in primary six being taught about their periods and how to deal with them - I got virtually nothing until secondary four, where I had just one hour with an invited speaker who was a white American guy, given that the local teachers were way too squeamish to talk about sex. I witnessed this first hand with my parents both being teachers - as a form teacher, my mother had sex education in her curriculum; oh there was nothing too exciting in what she had to teach, just the basic biological facts of where babies came from but even then she skipped that chapter every year and plain refused to do it. I told her that she was failing her students in this aspect but she just shrugged her shoulders and declared that none of the other teachers were doing it as well, so she didn't want to be the only one. In any case, there's this assumption that young people will listen to their parents and teachers - at this stage, I'm rolling my eyes so freaking hard I'm falling off my chair. After all, my parents were primary school teachers and it didn't take long before I realized that they had chosen that profession as they couldn't figure out anything more complex than the PSLE curriculum - yeah they were simple and not highly educated; thus it wasn't their job to educate me but rather my job as the highly educated child to save my parents from their own ignorance and stupidity. Thus I've always been great at doing my own research. 

Having experienced that at home, I had much the same experience with my other teachers in school. I knew I was going to go to university, get a highly paid professional job and go explore this wonderful world whilst my teachers were going to be stuck in that same school all their lives not achieving much, never progressing beyond the school gates. What a good education gave me though was the ability to do my own research - oh a huge part of my university experience was spending hours doing all kinds of research, getting information from various sources in different languages. In primary school, the kids go into school and are spoon fed information by the teachers but once you get to further education, you're expected to find your own information and turn up in class ready to share what you have learnt. Now what I am describing here is pretty standard for anyone who has a degree, so why is the writer making the wrongful assumption that the students will be willing to listen to anything the teacher has got to say on the issue of sex education? An engaging student might challenge the teacher by asking questions and starting a conversation about the matter, but most young people these days will take one look at the teacher and think, "you're an ugly loser who hates your job, I don't want to be here listening to anything you have to say on the topic so I'm just going to stare into space and daydream." Hence you can preach all you want to these students about sex education, morality and abstinence, but they're going to listen to the people they respect the most and it won't be their parents or teachers - it will be whoever they are following on social media. You are going to have to work very hard to earn the respect and attention of young people these days. 

Thus I say, stop treating students as if they're empty vessels waiting to be filled with whatever the teachers have on their curriculum but instead, treat them like intellectual scholars who have a mind of their own and then on that basis, start to work to earn their respect before you can expect them to listen to you. I had a horrible argument with my father once - I'll spare you the details but I'll jump to the punch line. I took a very different point of view on a matter and he was frustrated that I didn't listen to him, like I was some naughty child who didn't do as I was told. He was upset that I wouldn't just blindly agree with him on the matter, I had to point out to him that I am a lot more highly educated than he was and I have a wealth of work experience. To be blunt: I'm intelligent whilst he's (for want of a better word) stupid; my father is really quite uneducated and working class; so why would I put all my own knowledge and experience aside to blindly default to my parents' opinions on the matter instead of relying on my own wisdom? Oh yeah, Asian parents make the dumb assumption that they are the only source of influence when it comes to their children's morality when in reality, they are competing with a huge number of sources, especially social media. The fact this Asian parents often spend so much time working they simply don't spend enough quality time with their children and thus the children will then turn to social media to find role models to make sense of the world. I grew up in an age before social media but that still didn't stop me from sourcing a wide range of information from different sources to form my view of the world and my parents kinda just ignored the fact that I had become this avid researcher only to one day wake up and realize, oh shit, we actually have zero influence over our son and he thinks we are stupid idiots not worth listening to (and that's me putting it very mildly). 

Thus if these religious groups really want to influence young people and make a real impact on their attitudes towards issues like sex, sexuality and LGBT rights, then the answer is obvious: you have to reach these young people on their wavelength through whichever social media platform they like, be it Tik Tok, Instagram or Twitter. If you think that you can influence young people by going through the MOE, then I simply roll my eyes and think, this writer is so woefully out of touch with the real world. Even if you do get the teachers to teach and preach all you want about family values, guess what? The students are probably not going to listen to that teacher and even if in the best case scenario, the teacher does have the attention of the student, well that's just one source of information about the topic of sex and sexuality. You're one voice out of a hundred bombarding the student's brain on the matter - so if the student then goes to watch a Hollywood movie featuring a happy gay couple, then that's yet another source of influence on the student's perception on the issue of sex and sexuality. What are you going to do to make sure that the student will then remember the words of the teacher and take the teacher's stance on the matter rather than saying, "oh look, that's what they do in California, it's so different from Singapore but that's so cool, I like what I see." I work in sales & marketing and I know how hard it is to get your target consumer group to listen to your message - that's why professionals like me get paid a lot of money to create a successful sales & marketing campaigns whilst the writer doesn't even begin to recognize just how hard it is to capture the attention of young people and influence them these days; thus he is like an ostrich with his head in the sand.

8. LGBT Activists and what they will do next

At least this is one thing we can agree on - no, the LGBT activists aren't going to go away now that S377A will be repealed, they are going to keep fighting for more. No one ever imagined for a second that repealing S377A would make the LGBT activities just disappear overnight. You only need to look at other countries in the West where there is a long standing battle between the left and the right, the pro-gay liberal left has been fighting this battle with the anti-gay religious right for a bloody long time and will continue to fight long into the future long after we're all dead. This is because of the wide range of opinions you will find in any diverse society and we simply have to accept that there will never ever be any consensus on the issue, people will disagree but as long as we can agree to keep it civil and respect this diversity, then we can allow this discussion to continue indefinitely. Here's the thing you'll just have to accept: in liberal European countries like Sweden, Norway and Germany, there are LGBT activists. In homophobic countries like Jamaica, Nigeria and Uganda, there are LGBT activists - in fact these LGBT activists are everywhere and there's absolutely nothing you can do to get rid of them and make them disappear. I take my hats off to the LGBT activists in the very homophobic countries where they face threats to their lives on a daily basis but they still bravely fight for more gay rights. Anyone who suggested that the LGBT activists would somehow just go away if S377A was repealed is really out of touch with reality and hasn't even taken a look at what has happened in other countries around the world where this issue has been dealt with this issue before. Don't be a frog at the bottom of the well - other countries do exist you know? 

Thus I would like to conclude by asking you to please watch the short explanation by local comedians Munah & Hirzi on the topic of the repeal (hyperlinked here)- they last put out a video four years ago and have gone on to work on individual projects but this was so important that they got back together to explain the topic to you. I did try to embed it on my blog post but somehow Blogger refused allow me to do so. Mind you, I have other topics that I do want to cover apart from this repeal so hopefully, I will be able to do a post on something else soon as I have a lot to share with you guys. But until then as always - please feel free to leave a comment below to let me know your thoughts and many thanks for reading.