| Yawning
Bread. November 2007
It's the principle, stupid by John Toh
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My partner Ben and I recently had an interesting dinner experience with
Oscar who was visiting from Singapore . We had a lovely meal at a charming
French bistro and chatted about the current property boom in Singapore ,
our much happier existence overseas and inevitably broached the subject of
the much-debated repeal of Section 377A in Singapore 's Penal Code.
Although the dinner conversation never became unpleasant or hostile, Oscar
insinuated that I was being less than filial in my choice to
"abandon" my recently widowed mother in Singapore while seeking
a new life away from "home" with my partner. It was something he
could never do, he said. For Oscar, family was the all-important aspect of
his life, for which he could never imagine leaving them behind to move to
a foreign land. And on the subject of the penal codes and
decriminalisation against homosexuals, he felt that the Singaporean
Government's promise not to persecute private homosexual activity was
quite satisfactory and wondered why we would be so fixated on the
"principle" of the law.
I suppose what made the situation so ironical was Oscar's particular background. He happens to be my good friend Jonathan's mahjong kaki [2] - someone whom Jonathan had made a connection with following a tryst which Oscar and his then boyfriend (an older married man) had organised online many years ago. Not knowing Oscar well, I had all along assumed that he was a gay young man who was unfortunate enough to have become involved with a married man. I was therefore surprised to learn from Jonathan, after my dinner with Oscar, that he now had this girlfriend whom he intends to marry and have children with, not withstanding the fact that he cheats on her while maintaining a clandestine relationship with his current boyfriend (who happens to be a different married man from the earlier one). Obviously, it's all fine with Oscar, as long as he ultimately fulfils his personal, familial and societal obligations of propagating the species. My partner and I were only offered the opportunity to meet up with Oscar before the weekend, when his girlfriend would come to join him on an extended holiday upon conclusion of his official business. It would have been just too awkward for Oscar should his girlfriend find him associating with this apparently happily "married" gay couple. Suffice to say, I should be the last person worthy of passing moral judgement on other people, gay or otherwise inclined. Yet it seems almost laughable that the concept of traditional family values should be thrown in my face by someone who was apparently filial yet lived his life as a complete lie to both his family and his potential wife. Was my decision to leave my family and friends to seek an honest and respectful existence in a foreign society with my life-partner so wrong? And are we to admire such noble adherence to these so-called traditional family values even though it is achieved through deceit and at the expense of another person's right to a happy and honest relationship? I have come across enough instances amongst friends and colleagues, both straight and gay, where they have for some reason or other been caught in forced or sham marriages (sometimes involving children) to know that these aren't the kind of family values anyone should ever aspire to. Such family values, especially when enforced unquestioningly through our traditional social or religious institutions, can result in hypocrisy and suffering – as evident in Oscar's life. As I had tried to reason with Oscar during the dinner conversation, the moral foundation for any modern civilised society has to be the principle of equality and mutual respect for each other. Beyond the religious or secular rules and laws that may be imposed on us, it is the universal social ideals of honesty, integrity and mutual trust that really prevent us from degenerating into a mob of wild animals who would not hesitate to cheat, hurt or, ultimately, kill each other. But of course, my insistence on upholding the moral principles of truth and honesty would be seen to be foolish by those who are only too accepting of the compromised realities of the world we live in. Like the majority of Singaporeans, I too was born into a family whose forebears had immigrated to Singapore seeking better social and economic circumstances compared with their country of birth. My sister, both my parents and their siblings, as well as their parents all left home and eventually started new lives with their respective spouses in foreign lands. With such a context, I certainly make no apology for similarly observing our own family "tradition" by doing the same, albeit outside Singapore . Given Singapore 's unique social circumstances, with its predominantly migrant population, it is incomprehensible that the Singaporean Government would deny this aspect of its social history moving forward. Is it not hypocritical to, on the one hand, readily welcome motivated, talented and opportunistic foreigners to "add the sparkle to our diamond", as PM Lee Hsien Loong put it recently [3] and yet be so critical and dismissive of its own people who seek to do likewise in other lands? When my parents got married in Singapore in the late 1950's, they pushed the prevailing societal boundaries by choosing to marry each other for love and without, quite significantly, the approval of their respective families. The objections from both sides arose essentially because they both were from differing races and religions, having subscribed to two different albeit mainstream Christian denominations. They defied family and tradition and proceeded to marry. Despite the lack of this family support, initial economic difficulties and their determination to be together and prove the cynics wrong, the marriage remained strong, faithful and endured almost 50 years before my father eventually succumbed to cancer a few years ago. How can any reasonably thinking person get away presuming that gay life would preclude belief in family or values such as decency and integrity? My same-sex partner and I have had a loving, respectful and honest relationship for almost 10 years. Regardless of religious convictions or any external impositions, we strive to live morally upright lives and to treat each other with utmost care and respect, as we would others around us. But we revel in the knowledge that our respective immediate families and close friends are happy to nurture and treat us as a committed and valid family unit, even if others less enlightened or intolerant choose to deny our existence. The institution of marriage has indeed had such a colourful history. As a social construct, it has evolved quite dramatically over time to mean different things in various cultures, particularly with regard to sexual expression, shared property and core obligations for the care of children. It therefore baffles me when the so-called traditionalists and religious conservatives refer to a delusional historical definition in their views on the ever-evolving subject of family and marriage. Yes, the evangelical Christian groups would readily have us believe that they own the franchise on the concept of human "love" and that marriage must be product of a spiritual or God-sanctioned union. Yet we know, through a more thorough understanding of social history, that the idea of marriage, as a contractual relationship between legal equals (and one borne out of mutual love for each other), is a very recent development. [4] When my own mother got married to my father in 1957, she was forced to formally resign from the Singapore Civil Service and to re-join in her newly acquired married name, thereby losing any prior service history or seniority in the process. We now take it for granted but it took an enlightened and civilised legal reformation of a woman's status in our society to ensure that married women of today need no longer bear the brunt of an unreasonable legacy of coverture, where her legal entity was only fully covered by her husband's. In my reference to Oscar's sexual and social predicament, I am certainly not advocating a reversion to prudish and outdated values or, for that matter, strict adherence to monogamous practices but rather the propagation of mutually respectful and consensual human and familial relationships. If anyone - whether male, female or in-between for that matter - isn't old enough or capable of deciding for themselves what is in the best interests of their chosen partnership or the children they wish to produce together, then they are definitely unworthy of such a partnership or parenting. Instead, our society continues to uphold the ridiculous practice where parents, church or even the state can dictate whom a young man or woman should or shouldn't marry, regardless of whether they are ready or willing participants in such commitments. Might not the social debate, if there is to be one, be better off focusing on these major structural fault lines? So, in our non-homogenous and culturally diverse society in Singapore , what traditions and values do we choose to preserve? Surely, this is not a clear-cut matter and certainly not one of blindly deference to a simplistic historically or scripturally-based authority? If it were, then why shouldn't those of us of Chinese ethnicity not insist on clinging on to our ancient and culturally-accepted practice of having a wife and multiple concubines ( i.e. de facto polygyny) … even if the modern laws in "motherland" China have since moved on and are now influenced by modern social codes? It is worthwhile noting that polygamy, previously encouraged and influenced by Confucian-values of the past that emphasized procreation and the continuity of the father's family name, was subsequently outlawed by the Communist Government of China's Marriage Act of 1953 and only banned in Hong Kong as recently as 1971. Why, for that matter too, should Muslim Malays in Singapore be allowed to practice polygamy, albeit of a consensual and mutually-respectful type, if it is not available to Muslims in Turkey or Bosnia-Herzegovina and those who live in other secular or non-Muslim states? And why would the die-hard Indian cultural traditionalists in Singapore not insist on maintaining the age-old but cruel marital practice of suttee even if this has eventually been outlawed in India ? I would submit that it because they possess a socially-evolved conscience and an integrity that allows outdated and unreasonable aspects of social tradition (and even certain ancient practices based on religious dogma) to be overridden by a modern sensibility. I would like to quote historian Gary Leupp [5] in his open letter to Massachusetts Gov. Mitt Romney, who is currently one of the forerunning candidates in the Republican Party's US presidential race and a follower of the Morman faith. Leupp was responding to Romney's deference to 3,000-years of recorded history in his disagreement with the 2003 Supreme Court ruling (that discrimination against gay couples in matters relating to marriage violated the Commonwealth's constitution) when he wrote, "If history, with a capital H, has any function at all, it is to induce people, merely through cumulative experience, to get more rational, and thereby alleviate the kinds of suffering they can inflict upon themselves". I came across this other saying, regarding the attitude towards the traditional practice of polygyny ( i.e. polygamy in which a man has more than one wife, as opposed to polyandry, where a woman has more than one husband) in Asia: Wife is not as good as concubine, concubine is not as good as prostitute, prostitute is not as good as secret affair, secret affair is not as good as the affair you want but can't get . The origins of this saying aren't clear but I can only speculate that Oscar and his family, however closely-knit they may claim to be, must subscribe to such a tradition. They may even be trying to improve it by choosing not to discriminate against the gender of the object of his secret affair. So, while we continue to delude ourselves by proudly championing our "Asian family values", which dictate that our obligations to family and country must come before our personal needs, we seem to contradictorily accept that our selfish carnal needs can still be appeased and accommodated by these values; as long as the philandering man does not get caught, bring shame to his family and, more importantly, he continues to fulfil his primary-role of maintaining the economic well-being of his family. One must then wonder if Republican Senator Larry Craig [6] of Idaho also shares these same traditional "Asian family values" as Oscar. It was just too bad that he got caught, metaphorically, with his pants down in that airport toilet cubicle. It is not surprising then that Senator Craig, like Oscar, would see no need for changing the status quo which opposes as "outrageous" a concept as same-sex marriage. Why bother reviewing and re-writing the rules, after all, when people such as Senator Craig and Oscar can continue to enjoy the best of both worlds and their insistence on upholding "good old-fashioned family values" - regardless of their quest for clandestine pleasures on the side - reinforces the righteous conservative majority view? Our traditional Asian family value system seems to have placed an immense burden and focus on mere financial support of the family. We therefore continue to convince ourselves that happiness can only stem from a state of economic well-being. And this drives our obsession to place the economy and material comfort above all else in our existence. Is it not surprising then that such a value-based system can been capitalised upon by those in political power as well as the various evangelical Christian groups that have, quite alarmingly, developed a huge following among the affluent segments of society in Singapore ? In the context of the on-going debate on the repeal of Section 377a and the stand taken by the law-makers and traditional/ religious conservative faction in society that a decriminalisation of the homosexual act would undermine the basis of the family unit, my burning questions to them would be: What really are these abstract "Asian traditional family values" you are so keen to preserve through a status quo of our prevailing set of flawed laws? And does the principle of the law itself and the fundamental basis for our values on family and inter-personal relationships mean so very little to you? While the diamond that represents Singapore 's stellar economy could well do with even more sparkle, we might realistically acknowledge that some of our "family jewels" aren't quite as pure or precious as we would like to think them to be. The true sparkle will only come from the quality of our humanity and a reflection of a genuine tolerance and understanding of the diversity in the overall setting of our collective gem. The mature civil society that Singapore hopes to nurture cannot simply hide behind a veil of questionable and outdated traditional values and must continue to strive for more universal and humane ideals that are based on the principle of self and mutual respect in all our relationships and at all levels. We cannot afford to blindly stand by the vague notions of "family values" seen in traditional or religious terms, especially when they can be so flawed or irrelevant to our modern social context and values. We have seen some countries make huge leaps forward in the area of gay rights. We have also observed regression in some, such as the USA and its trusty ally, Australia , under the misdirected guise of religious conservatism and stoicism. This is another opportunity for mighty little Singapore to show the way forward to the rest of the world, as it has done in so many other ways. And surely, both Oscar's wife-to-be
and his boyfriend's wife deserve a much better deal than their current
predicaments!
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Footnotes
Addenda None
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