Saturday, October 20, 2007

377A

So i am rather slow in catching the news and i just know about the petition against 377A today through the newspaper. The petition had been passed and going to be debated in parliament next week. Apparently there are two camps in this campaign, one to petition to remove 377A and another to keep 377A. For those who do not know what is 377A, the Penal Code of Singapore, in Section 377a, provides for a jail sentence for up to two years should a man be found to have committed an act of "gross indecency" with another man, though i think this applies to all sexual intercourse between same sex, including woman with another woman.

I read through some comments on both website, by people who sign for each petition. http://www.keep377a.com/Default.aspx for keeping 377A, and http://repeal377a.com/ for removing 377A. Personally, i signed for repealing 377A, because i do not find the basis that people reject homosexuals on religious grounds. On grounds on corroding family values, i do not find it very convincing either.

People have often said that nature is about male and female and not the same sex. They argued that God created us to have man and woman together and homosexuals will go to hell blah blah blah. I do think that i'm a religious person but i don't really follow any major religion. I believe there is a greater being, and with his/her all mighty power will create the right things. If it is not meant to happen, it will never happen. Not to mention that in nature many animals exhibit homosexual behaviours. Taking drug is not desirable either, but seriously i don't see people saying drug abuser will go to hell as much as homosexuals. I seriously do not understand the strong animosity towards homosexuals, except that religions have not been preaching about tolerance and understand, but rather to be narrow minded about their perception of what is God's creation. Religion is what one interpret it to be, there is not much of truth inside because we all know how religion has change over the years. Theory of evolution goes against the theory of God's creation, and church has oppose such theory but slowly they change their story to match the theory of evolution. While the muslim extremists preach about holy war and the legitimacy of it, other more moderate muslims is preaching the other way. Seriously, if religion is all encompassing, why are there different interpretation?

The so call majority of society say that removing 377A will corrode traditional family values. I am just wonder who determine these traditional family values. I remember through history, many dynasty actually have marriages among brother and sister, which we will consider them to be incest now. Polygamy used to be traditional family values, but we have already abolish this. So i wonder what is our traditional family values now? Do we change the values according to needs? Initially when Singapore just gained it's independence, the government encouraged families to have lesser children, stop at two and encouraged women to go out and work. But now our government is regretting it's decision of getting women to work, because producing babies is suppose to be the job of women. As we can see, our family values always change with times according to needs. So how can we keep 377A based on something that keep changing as what the government like.

Signing the petition is 1 thing, because i know that it will not go through since you know who does not agree with it, so the repeal definitely will not pass through in parliament. But still, i would like to see changes to the oppressive society, even though many do not see it since they are not the ones being oppressed.

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