The Price of 'Morality'
by Jennifer Altavilla
Prime Minister of Singapore, Lee Hsien Loong, says the government was "maintaining family and moral values" when it dismissed a proposal to legalize sex between men. Although Parliament passed a bill legalizing oral and anal sex among heterosexuals, it voted against the gay sex proposal in order to uphold what Loong calls the "conservative" values of the nation. Loong says the Singaporean government does not consider the gay population, which numbers around 200,000-300,000 people, or five percent of the Singaporean population, a minority group and thus it refuses to grant gays minority rights.
Thus, law 377A remains, even after thousands have petitioned for its repeal. Under that law 377A, which is part of a collection of sex laws dating back to the British colonial period, a man can be imprisoned for two years if he is caught fornicating with someone of his sex. Loong says the law is rarely enforced, which is the way he wants to keep it. Loong sees the law not so much as anti-sex legislation, but as a buffer against gay marriage, a concession, he predicts, gays would push for if law 377A was repealed. Gay marriage, if legalized, would subvert the traditional value system and "family unit" the Singaporean government has long championed. Loong will do whatever he can to protect the conservative morals that he says are absent in the West. That conspicuous absence of values, he says, has led to a decline in Western marriage rates and a disintegration of the family, both of which he thinks are so widespread that the "majority of [Western] children are born out of wedlock."
Such conservative values are so entrenched in Singaporean culture because the small island nation has been governed by the same political party, The People's Action Party, since 1965, the year Singapore became a republic. Lim Siew Yea, in her book Politics and Self: A Study of Gopal Baratham and Suchen Christine Lim, says The People's Action Party encourages people to "sacrifice some degree of personal freedom to promote greater peace and harmony among its people."
To those comfortably enshrouded in the Western bubble, it seems strange and impossible that a country could still have laws regulating private sexual activity. The truth is, homosexual sexual activity was illegal in the United States until 2003, when the landmark case Lawrence vs. Texas declared such laws unconstitutional. However, 13 states still have laws in their own constitutions that prohibit sex between same sex couples. Although great strides have been made, the fight for equality is far from over.
Still, the situation is worse in other nations. In May 2006 a group of gay activists were beaten up by a group of conservative protesters after a gay pride parade in Moscow. After the incident, Moscow mayor Yuri Luzhkov said he would ban gay pride parades as long as he was in control of the city. A proposed bill to outlaw homosexual sexual activities is still being debated in Nigeria. If passed, gays who have sex, as well as organizers of gay rights groups, could face up to a five year prison sentence if caught.
After examining the brutal policies of countries such a Nigeria, it makes one wonder if it is just sex that countries are trying to control. Why is it that leaders are so affronted by a private act? It is likely that leaders who condemn homosexual sexual activity see it as a subversive act against conformity and government control. It is not necessarily that they care whether two men have sex, but rather it is that they care that those two men are violating the social norm. Ultra conservative leaders see anyone who goes against the government as a potential threat, even if the subversive act takes place in the privacy of one's own home. The reason Lee Hsien Loong is so reluctant to legalize gay sex could be that such a decision would represent a concession to a radical group, a group outside the realm of the traditional value system that Singaporean leaders have been protecting for over 40 years. The economy and society of Singapore have been designed around that system. Any slight crack, any small concession, might cause the whole structure of Singapore to fall. No matter how fiercely Singapore upholds morality, Prime Minister Loong should be asking himself: Is that stability worth protecting if thousands of his people are being denied basic human freedoms?
