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1997
The gay debate strengthens the state
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One of the major lines of defence for the gay lobby in their arguments is that
homosexuality is NOT a question of choice.
In the pure sense of homosexual orientation, this really is true. Yet because of determined obfuscation by the opponents, so easily spread in the persistent fog of ignorance, even a simple fact like this one becomes a major battle. The danger is that in digging in our heels on this question - necessary though it may be since it is so fundamental a misconception - we ourselves are oversimplifying the matter, and this oversimplification can be a weakness in the gay arguments, as any oversimplification can be in any other debating position.
The fact is, beyond the given of homosexual orientation, lots of things in a gay person's life has some degree of choice. Yet even if there is a big element of choice in a homosexual person's lifestyle, it does not have to weaken the gay lobby's arguments. If anything, a more critical analysis in this regard can make a major contribution to the clarification of State-citizen relationships generally, to the benefit of everyone, straight, gay and in-between. Let's first expand a bit on this "homosexual lifestyle". This phrase is considered pejorative. It has the stink of a libidinous, self-centred, self-destructive, anti-moral lifestyle. Even the word "lifestyle" alone is slightly tainted. But we shall overlook that and examine a few key features of a gay person's life. First and foremost, he has sex -- with other men (or women in the case of lesbians). Oh yes, whether to have sex or not is a conscious choice. But if he is attracted to other men, and never attracted to women, what is the alternative? The alternative is NOT one of having sex with women; the alternative is no sex at all. Is that realistic for a living breathing human? Therefore a choice of whether to have sex is a severely constrained choice. To condemn people for making that "choice" is to ignore the fact that there is no meaningful alternative. In many other areas, though, he has a greater or lesser degree of discretion. He may choose to be out and live openly and talk openly as a gay person. He may decide to move out and live with his love partner. He may decide to support gay causes. All these situations involve conscious decisions, but they are not decisions made on clean territory, so to speak. They are made within an emotional landscape that make the alternatives costly to his well-being. He would pay a great emotional cost to deny his own nature and live a furtive life, or daily to suffer the humiliation of his own powerlessness, or to disavow his feelings for the one he loves. Even supporting gay causes is not a decision of pure fancy. It often has to do with his affirmation of himself, and his self-respect. However, there are choices that are close to pure discretion, like whether to wear a T-shirt that proclaims, "I'm gay - you have a problem with that?", or whether to decorate his apartment with posters of nude males, or whether to spend a weekend at the beach with the loudest of his gay friends. Or -- let's be provocative now -- whether to be promiscuous (not that promiscuity is confined to gay persons). Some people, even those tolerant of homosexuality, may say, all these constitute a flaunting of homosexuality, and by that they mean it is offensive and should be curbed. Really? So what if it's flaunting? So what if there is a big element of free, maybe even selfish, choice in what he does? Does it negate his right to do what he wants?
With this, we move into the question of the relationship between the State and Society on one side and the Individual on the other, though in the rest of this essay, I will leave aside Society, and merely assume that in these matters, the State is its agent and enforcer. Hence the focus will be on the State versus the Individual. The question that is crystallised by the foregoing discussion about the gay person's exercise of choice is: under what circumstances, and for what objectives, is the State justified in circumscribing the Individual's freedom of action? An area in which the State's role is almost unanimously accepted is to combat any clear and present danger. This could range from national defence, to imposing a curfew when there is rioting in the streets, to fairly stringent quarantine measures when there is an epidemic. On a smaller scale, the State gets involved when individuals pose a clear and present danger to other individuals, like throwing flower pots from the tenth floor, drink driving, or failure to provide fire exits when designing a building. However, even when we can agree that the State has a role in these areas, it can be still be contentious whether a specific action by the State is justifiable or not. The more narrowly focussed the State action, the greater the consensus that the action is justifiable. For example, people can accept a law that says you cannot throw flower pots from any window or balcony. People will not accept a law that bans people living on the second floor up from having any flower pots at all, however well-intentioned the law may be.
The State however is also the vehicle for Society to achieve its objectives, not just to combat threats. These objectives could be economic, social (including justice) and even moral. You may think that economic growth and justice cannot be contentious objectives, but that is true only on a macro scale. When it gets down to the nitty-gritty like liberalising the financial sector to allow more competition, or affirmative action, suddenly unanimity evaporates. Likewise, social objectives like better education, greater availability of housing, or more advanced medical care sound nice as slogans, but almost anything you do in these spheres will earn you opponents. This is because people are socially diverse and the only way you're going to satisfy that broad spectrum is when, rather than trying to do everything for them, you let them do as much as possible by themselves. They have to be given a buffet of choices, or simply let the private sector come up with marketable solutions. When social objectives segues into cultural, moral or lifestyle issues, the complexity gets worse. No two individuals share the same outlook. And furthermore, people question why the State needs to be involved in the first place. They ask: what is that imperative that makes it necessary for the State to preempt my own action? Is there a clear and present danger to be combatted? Is the task too large that individuals singly or in concert cannot achieve it, and therefore the State must do it in our stead?
Faced with that, some states stay away from such issues as much as possible. Other states, like Singapore, tend to wade in, but getting into these areas leads the State into serious problems of efficiency and equity, and sometimes -- especially in questions of equity -- they are serious enough to undermine the State itself. Firstly, consider the question of efficiency. This arises because most modern societies are diverse, and when the State ventures into cultural, moral and lifestyle issues, it is hard to define what exactly is the "good" that it is trying to achieve without talking in broad and general terms. This vagueness is fine when mounting campaigns such as our Family Life campaigns -- you know, the father-mother-and-two-kids thing -- which no one listens to anyway, but when the State tries to implement its ideas in concrete ways, it finds itself in a lot of trouble. Take the law on unnatural sex. The contortions of interpretation regarding its application to oral sex -- in Singapore the latest interpretation is that oral sex is legal if it is foreplay leading up to vaginal penetration, but illegal otherwise, oh and don't forget to collect proof that it WAS foreplay and that you DID penetrate vaginally or else you could go to jail -- is just the latest joke. And what good is being achieved by all this effort at prosecution and appeals? Are we using the resources of our justice system efficiently (in the broad sense of return on investment)? Another example is Singapore's HIV prevention campaign. For years, the campaign's main thrust has been a moralistic one: "Say no to casual sex", with hardly any mention of condoms. Why? That would only encourage promiscuity, and promiscuity is some sort of threat to Singapore. But most thinking people consider the moralistic tone unrealistic. People are going to have casual sex, whatever our high priests may wish, so you might as well give them some practical facts. Instead, the campaign just turns people off because of its tone. Could we have saved more lives if the campaign had been less hobbled by "lifestyle" fears? Could the money we, the taxpayers, throw on these poster, radio and television campaigns, been better -- more efficiently -- spent?
And this example brings us into a new question. I said above that one of the key justifications for having a State is that we need such an animal to deal with clear and present dangers. A medical emergency is a clear and present danger. If a State does not deal effectively with a danger, especially if it holds itself back because of woolly "lifestyle" or "morality" issues, it calls into question its very purpose. Moving on to the question of equity, this arises because in choosing what kind of culture or moral model the State should espouse, the tendency is to select one that is held by the largest section of the population. It's the majoritarian justification for the State's interference in individual lifestyles. The result is that the State adds its coercive powers to the weight of the majority, whether in terms of language streaming in schools (for example, the SAP schools are a sore point with the non-Chinese of Singapore), housing policies (the HDB actively discriminates against unmarried persons), or free speech (do I need to give an example?) The minorities are therefore doubly burdened, first, by their demographic weakness and then by the lack of State attention. Here I must clarify that when I say "minorities" I don't mean just the ethnic minorities, which is how Singaporeans tend to understand the term. Nearly everybody is a minority in some way. Some people are in a minority racially, others linguistically, others socio-economically, or in terms of their political ideas, marital status, age group, and so on. Coming back to my point, many States believe that there is a serious danger of inequity when minorities are doubly burdened, and so those States try to redress that by bending over backwards to ensure a more level playing field for the minorities. Hence their adherence to principles of free speech, free association, and non-discrimination. This is in contrast to States that try consciously to promote a particular cultural or moral system. But ensuring justice is one of the fundamental raisons d'etre of all States, and the more a State tries to promote a particular cultural or moral system, the more it departs from that fundamental obligation. To its own detriment.
I think I have wandered some cosmic distance from how I opened this essay, so let me try to loop back. I said in my fourth paragraph that "even if there is a big element of choice in a homosexual person's lifestyle, it does not have to weaken the gay lobby's arguments. If anything, a more critical analysis in this regard can make a major contribution to the clarification of State-citizen relationships generally, to the benefit of everyone, straight, gay and in-between." The "gay lifestyle" is far from the
only issue which calls into question the State's role in matters cultural and
moral. But it does raise some acute questions about the relationship between the
State and the Individual. Questions like:
© Yawning Bread
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Footnotes None Addenda None
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