The Gay Debate in Singapore

SINGAPORE (AP) -- Hundreds of Singaporeans are calling for the government to decriminalize homosexual sex, ahead of a parliamentary debate on the most extensive revision of the city-state's penal code in 23 years.

Under the proposed changes to be debated Oct. 22, oral and anal sex between consenting heterosexual adults will no longer be considered an offense. But Section 377A, which deals with the same acts between men, will remain in force with a maximum penalty of two years in jail.

Gay rights advocates say the clause is "Victorian legislation" that discriminates against a minority group and violates an individual's right to privacy. They launched a protest Friday, including an online petition to Singapore Prime Minister Lee Hsien Loong, which by Tuesday had garnered more than 2,200 signatories.

"There is a small window of opportunity here to try to get our leaders to consider repealing Section 377A," petition organizer Alan Seah said in a statement. By keeping the clause, "we are in fact moving backwards, which defeats the government's goals of updating our criminal laws to keep in step with Singapore's image as a modern and forward thinking country," he said.
Earlier this year, Singapore's founding Prime Minister Lee Kuan Yew acknowledged that some people were "genetically born a homosexual" and "can't help it. So why should we criminalize it?" raising hopes that Section 377A would be abolished.

But the government, while welcoming gays into the civil service and permitting gay bars and spas in the city's center, maintains that Singapore remains a conservative society.
Prime Minister Lee Hsien Loong told a local university forum last month that while Singapore recognizes and respects homosexuals, changing the law would be "a very divisive argument. We will not reach consensus however much we discuss it."

"The tone of the society, the public, and society as a whole, should be really set by the heterosexuals and that's the way many Singaporeans feel," he said. "Our view, as a government, is we will go with society ... What people do in private is their own business; in public, certain norms apply."

The government has assured the local gay community that it would not actively prosecute them but gay rights advocates say that it is not enough.

"It is the responsibility of any democratically elected government to protect minorities from the 'tyranny of the majority,'" argues the online petition. "Far more conservative countries have done away with laws like these and are none the worse for it."

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Another one small step by the liberals to press their homosexual views on the silent majority. One can see from the way they make their demands known. The government has already said it will not persecute them and yet they say it is not enough. For the silent majority, we do not condone the act not because we are old fashioned but some of us do follow the moral standards that is within our hearts. I can never disobey the obvious 'yuck factor' when I see homosexual acts.

This is another evidence that the Bible is so accurate in portraying the environment that the world will be in before the coming of the end.

2Ti 3:1-9 You can be certain that in the last days there will be some very hard times. (2) People will love only themselves and money. They will be proud, stuck-up, rude, and disobedient to their parents. They will also be ungrateful, godless, (3) heartless, and hateful. Their words will be cruel, and they will have no self-control or pity. These people will hate everything that is good. (4) They will be sneaky, reckless, and puffed up with pride. Instead of loving God, they will love pleasure. (5) Even though they will make a show of being religious, their religion won't be real. Don't have anything to do with such people. (6) Some men fool whole families, just to get power over those women who are slaves of sin and are controlled by all sorts of desires. (7) These women always want to learn something new, but they never can discover the truth. (8) Just as Jannes and Jambres opposed Moses, these people are enemies of the truth. Their minds are sick, and their faith isn't real. (9) But they won't get very far with their foolishness. Soon everyone will know the truth about them, just as Jannes and Jambres were found out.

Goes to show, in the name of being tolerant, they have accused those against them as intolerant so much so accusing the government of not protecting the minority. By accusing us of being intolerant, isn't that an act of intolerance as well?

I have just finished the book "The Case for the Real Jesus" by Lee Strobel. In Challenge 6 (or chapter 6) during an interview with Paul Copen, this is a great illustration that he used.

"Something is true - or corresponds to reality - even if people don't believe it. I often use the example of the earth being round even when people thought it was flat. Some people have said to me, "Well wasn't the earth flat for them at that time?' I say, 'No, the earth was STILL round. It wasn't as though people could fall over the edge of the earth adn be swallowed by dragons back then. The earth was round even if people didn't believe it..'"

So the issue between gays and general conservatives is this: what is the reality of truth? What is the yard stick on which to measure one's morality?

What I can only say for Christianity is this:
a) The New Testament was and still is and will be still proved to be a reliable source of information about antiquity even though there are gnostic literature that is forcing themselves to paint an alternative reality, the Gnostic sources will not stand up to scrutiny.
b) Since the New Testament has time and again prove historians and archeologists that its contents are reliable, then the New Testaments claims about the truth in the Old Testament should be held in high regard.
c) If Old Testament has also proved the historians and archeologists about its reliable contents, then its non-provable contents such as the moral law, judgement against Sodom and Gomorrah has to be true to and thus the moral law against homosexuality must also be held in high regard

As already shown in 2 Timothy, the world has indeed decayed to a degree that doing wrong has become a right. It is now not 'OK' to do wrong behind closed doors, but to do wrong in plain view of everyone. Isn't that itself is a perversion?

In life there's always a choice...a 'natural' affection does not mean it is right because 'nature' in this world is 'infected' and so in some sense, things that seems 'natural' sometimes cannot be trusted to be 'natural'. The only way to know if anything is right is the moral code and for us Christians and for most people who lives by this moral code it is enshrined in the Bible.

For me, this argument can see no end because to some, morality is subjective and is relative to everyone. But how can one be sure that morality can be absolutely relative? Isn't that a contradiction.

We all need to live by a guideline. If the morality stand is not accepted, then this world CANNOT work at all. Murder can be accepted...maid abuse can be condoned...cars can go against the flow of traffic...not..it cannot be, if GAYS relies on rules to make their case known, then they must accept the existence of morality...the existence of human guidelines; and these guidelines are in us that cannot be explained away by evolution. No germ or molecule can know what is right or wrong...they are designed/created...

Think about it properly, a great lie is perpetrated in Singapore now.

Now...this episode gives me 'hope'...the positive expectation of GOOD coming in the form of Christ Jesus...for event rapture, very very very soon.