Thursday, August 30, 2007

Excerpts of LKY's interview with IHT

This is a good read, to understand the ideas in the guy who made Singapore what it is. That's not to say I totally agree with him, but some salient points are made, and I guess that it's good to know how our government (and our Prime Minister's father) thinks.

One thing that has been dissed around in the blogosphere for the longest time yet and one that I take issue with is, why China and Hongkong have accepted gays (officially), and Singapore is still like a little backwater village with its archaic laws (against homosexuality) made by some uneducated village heads. The Singapore government's stance is that the law is there, but we're "taking an ambiguous approach". So while you are "free to be gay", you might want to watch your back. The government can so choose to label you as one and throw you into prison simply cos... you're homosexual. But then, did they not read that, laws that are not enforced (and/or are not enforceable) only serve to weaken the legal system. So we might as well rid our system of it.

For me at least, although I don't like homosexual behaviour, I do not think that society will denigrate to the level of the slippery slope arguments that seem to be the reasoning of choice with politicians in Singapore. Because if you look at China, although homosexuality has been "approved" by their Communist government, that kind of behaviour and being is still frowned upon in society, even being laughed at, because China is and always will be an Asian society (read: conservative.) Ditto to Singapore, so I think PAP is worrying too much.

I've no time to read the whole article yet so I'll come back to this some time later.

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