I was looking at Youtube last night and saw that a National Day speech by Singaporean PM Lee was being live broadcast, so I started watching it, expecting some dry content about economic development, but instead the part I happened to join it at was the announcement about decriminalising male to male sex.
I don't know how the audience in the auditorium were chosen, but I think it fair to say that the response was not exactly enthusiastic. It was kind of funny to watch.
Anyway, PM Lee, playing what I think is smart politics for his country, immediately then swung into saying that while he believed most Singaporeans would support this bit of late modernity, they wanted traditional marriage protected, and the government wasn't going to risk a liberalising court in future find that the constitution meant the government had to recognise same sex marriage. The answer: they will amend the constitution to enshrine a definition of marriage as heterosexual. This part of the speech gained more approval from the audience.
I guess that, in future, there might still be scope for government recognition of gay relationships for some purposes. But it will be a long time before Singapore comes close to following the Western path towards full recognition of gay marriage. Given the cultural mix there, with a mix of three that are all highly orientated towards conservative views about family, recognising gay marriages as the equivalent of heterosexual ones would (I suspect) be a problem for the Indians and Muslim element in particular. (I think there might be an argument for Chinese to be more malleable of the topic - at least given the example of Taiwan*.)
Still, I do admire PM Lee, and all Singaporean politicians, for the calm and reasoned way they put arguments, and always seeking a path of national unity and security.
* Oh, but look at this article, indicating that legalisation in Taiwan has actually not been followed by improved public perceptions of gay marriage. The reaction to legalisation is very dependent on the local culture, I guess:
...in the United States, public approval of same-sex marriage improved after its legalization. Similar trends have occurred in European countries where same-sex marriage is legal. However, as seen in South Africa, which legalized same-sex marriage in 2006, and Ecuador, which legalized same-sex marriage in 2019, public opinion does not always improve after legalization. One survey in Taiwan found that 93 percent of respondents felt their lives had not been impacted by the legalization, but when asked about the impact on Taiwanese society as a whole, only 50.1 percent indicated no effect, while 11.9 percent said the overall social impact was positive, and 28.4 percent said it was negative.
That's funny a court in Singapore doing something the government does not like.
ReplyDeleteThey are not very independent. Whenever his father thought an opposition leader was getting too popular he would sue them successfully on quite specious grounds and win.
Interesting, but enshrining a particular definition of marriage in the constitution seems like grotesque overkill.
ReplyDeleteOne of the benefits of our long national debate about the subject was that, at least, we got to consider a lot of alternatives.
There are NO alternatives. A marriage is between a man and a woman til death do they part.
ReplyDeleteSad to see that another country has been successfully colonised.
ReplyDeleteSo far it seems we can never get the balance right. Decriminalisaton seems the moral thing to do. But one wonders if next thing we are having all this queer mental pollution being directed at young children. Where I am more young girls seem to be playing Rugby Union than young boys. I would never have played Rugby Union had there been the kind of vile mental pollution that we have going on today.
ReplyDeleteThe idea that you have to have fucking idiots with a beard, wearing a dress and makeup on television advertisements. This is just disgusting. I think we had things about right in the 90's. We should have kept these developmental disorders as strictly after-hours phenomena as far as the public mind is concerned.
Now we have the same inbred troglodytes as ever conspiring to mutilate children. Permanent physical damage to children. Heads will roll for sure.