He was barely into the first hundred days of his first term when this administration ruthlessly crushed the right of the people to life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness, a decision upheld both by him and the Secretary of Home Affairs, a unilateral decision that has divided our nation. In statements filled with inflammatory, misleading, and discriminatory rhetoric, this administration arrogantly claims to represent the opinion of the people when Singaporeans are, in fact, known to be kind, compassionate, open-minded, and tolerant.

Freedom does not tell you how you ought to live you life, to deny who you really are. A true democracy does not dictate what you can or cannot do, who you should or should not be, or whom you can or cannot be with.

But freedom is under attack, and it is now our responsibility to defend it.

Snowball '04 was to have been an innocuous event, a harmless winter party for fun-loving people. It was not, as the prime minister alleged, an event exclusively organized for gay people. If he had had all his facts straight he would have known that any member of the public could purchase tickets to the event, regardless of sexual orientation or gender identity. See, unlike him, the LGBT community does not discriminate against anyone. And he thinks he is teaching us queers a thing or two about fair and equal treatment toward people who are different? Please. Similar events have been held in Singapore previously with the endorsement of the administration even though that endorsement should not have even factored in. There is no question that the right of the people peaceably to assemble, and to petition the government for a redress of grievances, and their freedom of association cannot be infringed by that same government to which it had granted limited powers through the ballot. Neither was there any requirement in a free society for any organization to apply for and receive permission to hold activities in the first place. The Constitution of the Republic of Singapore protects free speech and LGBT groups like People Like Us must be free to flourish. The people are, and of right ought to be, free and independent, and their rights and freedoms cannot be subject to the "discretion" of the few in power. Government is not the solution to the problem; government is the problem, the late President Reagan once said. The police power of the state does not and should never have extended to allowing the state to pick and choose under the pretext of "moral values" to enforce whatever rights of the people it is okay with and voiding everything else, or decreeing what civil liberties apply and do not apply to our fellow citizens when all those rights are guaranteed by the same constitution that every cabinet member, including the prime minister himself, has sworn to preserve, protect, and defend.

This sudden and unreasonable reversal of public policy is totally uncalled for and I condemn all Lee administration officials involved in this discriminatory deed. Under the constitutional system of checks and balances, the state legislature must act to censure and reprimand all conspirators and perpetrators of the unconstitutional suppression of the inalienable rights and freedoms of the people. The People's Action Party, as its name suggests, has an obligation to serve the Singaporean people, not its party leaders. The Actionist leadership in the House must overturn the decision of the administration and tie the hands of the executive branch from rationing liberty and justice according to their personal moral values, or worse, whenever they feel like it. The prime minister has no right to impose his faith, personal beliefs, and moral values upon the Singaporean people; he is not Saddam Hussein. The religion of one person should not be the law for another. We must be mindful that we are all sinners. Take not the speck out of your neighbor's eye when you have a log in your own; it is bigotry. Let he who is without sin cast the first stone. We as a nation must not allow discrimination under the guise of moral values; it is deceit engineered to defraud the public. The Parliament must act to protect the rights of sexual minorities from the tyranny of the majority. The Parliament must not stand by and permit the creation of second class citizens in this country or the administration's proliferation of prejudice, which has no place in our society. Unless you act, gay and lesbian Singaporeans will not be included under the equal protection of the law. Unless you act, gay and lesbian Singaporeans will forever remain second class citizens.

I also condemn the homophobic rhetoric of Senior Minister of State Balaji Sadasivan at the 4th Singapore HIV/AIDS Conference. In those remarks, he branded gay men as being promiscuous sex machines and that is simply not true; we know better than that. It is unfair to equate gay people with hookers. It is unfair that he has accused gay people of maliciously spreading the HIV virus when many gay men living with HIV have not been tested regularly. It is unfair for this administration to advocate abstinence until marriage because same-sex couples are forbidden and precluded from the institution of marriage. And it is unfair for a happily married person like him to denounce gay and lesbian Singaporeans whose relationships, no matter how committed and devoted they are to each other, are rejected by their government and have no legal recognition or protection whatsoever. Same-sex couples are denied the numerous automatic rights and benefits that are synonymous with the words "I do" that our straight brothers and sisters take for granted. These range from the crucial right to make life-and-death medical decisions in the event that one's partner is incapacitated or otherwise unable to give consent, protection from domestic abuse, and second-parent adoptions, to mundane stuff like joint income tax filing, spousal and child tax relief deductions, and the baby bonus. Because the gay community contributes tremendously to the Singaporean economy and because gay and lesbian Singaporeans, too, are law-abiding taxpayers, Parliament must support the introduction and passage of legislation protecting equal marriage rights for all citizens with all the same protections, benefits, incentives, privileges, immunities, responsibilities, and obligations that ordinarily accompany a civil marriage license.

Whereas it is archaic and unreasonable to interfere with and regulate the intimate relations of the private citizen, whereas the state has no place in the bedroom, and whereas it is wrongful to single out any group of citizens as criminals by reason of sexual identity or activity and subject them to rampant police entrapment and discrimination, the legislature must with great velocity and urgency repeal Sections 377 and 377A of the Criminal Code to decriminalize homosexuality and remove all antigay and antisodomy references on the books. No one should be fired from his or her job solely because of his or her sexual orientation or gender identity. Parliament must enact antidiscrimination laws to protect LGBT Singaporeans in employment, education, housing, public accommodations, credit, and union practices, as well as hate crime laws to punish violence spawned from bias and bigotry. Perpetrators of violence who test our waters will find that our resolve is strong and unwavering. We must protect our children against gay-bashing and harassment and bullying and hatred and death threats in schools if we are to secure our nation's future. Parliament must pass legislation to empower and compel our nation's K-12 schools to provide students with mandatory diversity classes to promote tolerance and acceptance, take serious disciplinary action against gay-bashers, and turn unrepentant hardcore felons over to law enforcement officials in accordance with the due process of the law.