He dismissed the appeal of Ooi Kean Thong, 24, and Siow Ai Wei, 22, who were alleged to have been in an embrace at 5.20pm on 2 Aug 2003, at a park near Kuala Lumpur's Petronas Twin Towers.

Separately, it was argued that the mayor had failed to take into consideration the fact that Malaysia was a multiracial country [1] with different value systems, and that the act of hugging and kissing was an expression of love which should be encouraged.

Hearing this, Chief Justice Ahmad Fairuz Abdul Halim asked: "So, they should be given freedom to live as they like? The constitution allows all citizens to do that, even by the roadside, in a public park?

"In England, those acts are acceptable to the people in that country but is kissing and hugging acceptable to Malaysian citizens?

"Is the act according to the morality of Asian people?" he asked.

Ooi Kean Thong (L) and Siow Ai Wei (R)

The court [2] unanimously held that the Datuk Bandar of Kuala Lumpur was correct to charge Ooi and Siow with indecent behaviour (hugging and kissing) at the Kuala Lumpur City Centre Park. The court ruled that the section invoked by the Datuk Bandar to punish persons caught behaving indecently in public was constitutional.

Following this decision, the case against the couple will proceed in the lower court on 1 June 2006. Both had pleaded not guilty to committing the offence, but if they are convicted, they are liable to a fine not exceeding RM2,000 or jailed up to a year, or both.

Immediately, the Chief Justice's ruling hit the headlines, and Chinese-based political parties organised rallies. They saw this as yet another example of the creeping islamicisation of Malaysia.

They saw the civil courts imposing onto non-Muslims decency standards that are more typical of Islamic Shari'a courts.

In response, a number of Muslim organisations defended the standards, not just as Islamic, but as Malaysian.

Khairul Arifin Mohd Munir from the Muslim Youth Movement (Abim), said "Clear provisions on kissing and indecency must be stipulated in the guidelines. There need to be laws to curb kissing in public and hugging in an extreme fashion."

The Mufti (chief cleric) of Perak, one of the constituent states of Malaysia, Harussani Zakaria said, "Public decency standards should be applied to all Malaysians."

Echoing him, the minister in charge of Islamic affairs, Abdullah Mat Zin, said conformity with cultural norms is important. While Muslims are already under the jurisdiction of Shari'a courts, which will prosecute public indecency, non-Muslims too should not be allowed to engage in "kissing and hugging" publicly. It is anathema to local culture, he said.

Other Muslim groups tried to straddle the gap. Zainah Anwar, from the women's rights group Sisters In Islam, said she agreed that having sex in public is indecent and should be punished by law.

"But we are outraged because we do not believe the state has any moral or legal right to intrude into the personal choices citizens make about their lives and how they conduct themselves."

She seemed oblivious to the logical contradiction between her first statement and her second. In any case, no one has argued for the right to have full nudity and all-out sex in public.

This kind of untenable logic is what happens when people try to defend both dogma and freedom at the same time.

Meanwhile, fears spread that tourism may be hurt, after the BBC and many news agencies carried news of such severe laws to the world.

Singaporeans, conditioned by our government-influenced media to see Malaysia as a place where things always go wrong, may be prone to see the intrusion of religion-based "morals" into civic life as something that happens only there.

Far from it. It is happening here all the time, except that it comes less from Islam, which is not Singapore's state religion, but from Christianity, which nearly is.

Oral sex, even in the privacy of your own bedroom is still a crime, remember? See the article The blowjob that blew down our oral sex law (well, not yet [3]). Which religion gets all uptight about fellatio and cunnilingus? Christianity.

Notice too, how often complaints arise about proselytisation in schools? There was a case where teachers made attending church services a condition for non-Christian pupils' joining in co-curricular activities. See the article Our Christian jihadists. Then more recently, the issue of Christian-linked misinformation in sex-education classes blew up. See Fools and fraudsters: sexuality education in Singapore. Around the same time there was the Liberty League scandal where the government gave a $100,000 grant to a Christian-linked group out to promote anti-gay conversion "therapy".

Why do these things happen repeatedly? Because many in our government and the civil service tend to see the world through Christian lenses. Their idea of "doing good" is barely distinguishable from "doing Christianity", just like how in Kuala Lumpur, their idea of public decency is indistinguishable from Muslim decency.

Needless to say, everything about Singapore's laws, censorship policies and attitudes to homosexuality is Christian-derived [4].

Even consider the perennial complaint that movie censorship is too strict on sex and too lenient on violence. What explains this? Christianity doesn't care much about the depiction of violence, but gets all gnarled up at the idea of sex.

Fine, if you consider yourself a good Christian, you might wish to avoid watching films that degrade human sexuality, but if you think that it somehow gives you a right to tell others what they can or cannot watch, then I take issue with you.

In the Sunday Times of 23 April 2006, was a story titled "Facing the bare facts". It was about the Singapore branch of the Parisian topless revue Crazy Horse suffering from poor business.

The reporter said that the night he was there, there were only about 40 patrons in a hall that could seat 450.

They perform -- with clinical Stepford Wives precision -- a series of co-ordinated come-hither dances, twirling in unison, caressing poles, wriggling on a bed, flirting while dressed as Marlene Dietrich. All the while, their vital areas are concealed by an assault of lighting best described as sophisticated.

To appreciate such refinement, you need a history of refinement, the sort that comes from Western civilisation which has evolved from the burlesque extravagance of early Toulouse-Lautrec days to the frozen, more ordered and less bohemian exhibitionism of modern times.

Such a freeze alienated me because I have never been bohemian and neither am I a product of Western civilisation.

In the cold air of the cold show, I felt the draft that came from too few people in too big a place emanating from an audience not quite sure about what they were getting out of this dare-to-bare event.

My aesthetic side liked the show but my earthier portion wanted to see a little bit more. Maybe I am mistaken but in that dark cavern of emptiness, I thought I sensed emphatic souls who wished that someone would just turn off those damn distracting lights for a second.

Noticeably, after a particularly intense display where the girls' incredible bodies were bathed in little luminous triangles, a bunch of guys in the most expensive seats of $185 a pop headed out the door, presumably to make plans to see more accessible girls with big breasts at the next car show.

-- Sunday Times, 23 April 2006, 'Facing the bare facts'

The cheapest seats are priced at S$85. You get a drink and a 100-minute show. You don't really get to see breasts (and you can forget about bottoms). Every topless act is pixelated with laser light.

Why is the Singapore version so tame? You think Crazy Horse wouldn't be bolder if they could? Why couldn't they? I don't think you have to look very far.

According to the Sunday Times, Crazy Horse's Singapore managing director, Goh Min Yen, admitted that there have been some empty nights. She attributed this to the strict advertising restrictions imposed by the government. Under Media Development Authority (MDA) regulations, Crazy Horse is not allowed to advertise in most mass media like TV, radio, bus stops and taxi tops.

However, they can advertise in black-and-white on the cinema pages of The Straits Times and Lianhe Zaobao and in colour in the Business Times.

Ms Amy Tsang, deputy director of Media Standards and Arts at MDA, tells LifeStyle 'Print advertising guidelines for Crazy Horse, which is rated R21, are similar to that of films rated R21. More flexibility has been given to advertisements targeted at tourists.'

-- Sunday Times, 23 April 2006, 'Topless show
has to watch its bottomline'

Singapore needs to be careful not to let prudish "morality" strangle our economic options. We will acquire a very bad reputation among investors if after inviting global businesses to set up shop in Singapore, we tie them up with all manner of silly regulations, till they go broke.

The Singapore Tourism Board spent years wooing a nude revue such as Crazy Horse. I knew that from inside information well before it was announced. I had my criticisms about this approach, as you can see from the 2003 article Ushers and Carpenters , but I was arguing for more originality (which implies more freedom), not less. I instinctively sensed that a copy of what had been going on for years in the West wouldn't be a sustainable business concept. Much less did I expect a tamer version to succeed! We may have to get earthier, raunchier than our competitors.

No can do, the moralists will say. Singapore needs to be a safe place to bring up children.

Indeed, it should be a safe place to bring up children, but how is nudity, even sex, unsafe?

The harsh fact is we need a prosperous economy. The harsh fact is that to be in the top league of economies, we have to be a city of global importance. (I know I sound like the government here, but it's true.)

One of the essentials for being in the top league is that our air links with the rest of the world must be plentiful, so that it is convenient for people, including business leaders, to be based in Singapore. But for the air links to be plentiful, there must be enough traffic volume to make the numerous air links profitable for airlines. That means Singapore must have a huge tourism industry. Business travellers may pay more per seat, but they don't generate the volume that tourists do.

Why can't we get air traffic from just being a transit hub? Let them pass through Changi Airport on their way elsewhere. 

That's unrealistic because in the coming age, air travel will be more point-to-point. As aircraft increase their range, the need for transit stops decrease. If we want to have airlines stopping here, we have to have tourists, hordes of them, wanting to come here.

But why would anyone want to vacation in Singapore? We have no natural wonders; we have no particular historical significance. We don't even have a pleasant climate. 

This is not rocket science. Many great metropolises have shown the way. The attraction must be entertainment and culture. But we must accept the harsh fact of life that for many, entertainment must have a sexual element. Sex is fun. If we think otherwise, we're only deluding ourselves and hobbling our own chances.

We risk the same thing with the casino projects. After getting investors to sink in billions of dollars, we must be careful to give them the freedom to make it a success. We must not see it as a success at our expense. It will be to our economic benefit.

But what will investors think of Singapore should that happen? 

In the appendix Christians bashing other religions again is a letter to the Straits Times Online Forum by a medical student who attended a talk titled, "Spiritual roots of medicine and alternative therapies."

"The speaker started lambasting at the other religions and alternative therapy, saying that Shamanism is the root of Celtic beliefs, African witch doctors, Taoism, Buddhism and Hinduism," he wrote.

Acupuncture too was said to have "roots from shamanism in which rituals required needles to be poked onto a human body to expel evil spirits.

"I got the impression that anything non-Christian is wrong."

So there we go again. We want Singapore's economy to ride the wave of high-value-added services, such as medical treatment. We want to be a centre for research in the bio-medical sciences, which includes stem cell research -– something which Christian fundamentalists have been up in arms about. It may also include investigation into cures derived from traditional medical practices from East and West -– shamanism, according to the speaker.

See how religious dogma gets in the way? This is out of bounds. That is out of bounds.

Who, really, are the shamans in our midst?