That is unless you've read my posts about it
Now, as we can begin to talk about the law using past tense, I thought it would be good to appreciate just how ridiculous the whole saga has always been.
Pretty much nothing you might have heard or read about it over the years is factually true or makes any sense at all.Let's start with activists. How big was a role that Pink Dot played in gay equality in Singapore? To be frank, relatively tiny. The irony is that the real change to the treatment of gay community under the antiquated provisions of the British law came in 2007 - two years before Pink Dot held its first ever event. Since then, for 15 years now, the de facto reality has been that no gay person has been discriminated against under this law.
Gay couples have lived in peace and prosperity just like everybody else and will continue to.
The activist caterwauling used the dead husk of this colonial legislation as a banner to rally people seeking to parade their moral superiority about something under. As I have always commented, its purpose was never to change anything but to please one's own ego.
Do you think I'm making this up? Misleading you? Well then please tell me what will materially change for gay couples now that 377A will be taken off the books?Nothing.It's just a recognition of the already existing status quo which will now be enshrined in law. That's it.
All those years of rallying in Hong Lim Park have, in real terms, achieved nothing because material progress in decriminalization of gay sexual relations happened before social media (used today to organize people to come to the party) were even a thing.
But, of course, for the virtue-signalling crowds tangible progress is meaningless - all that matters is making a public fuss about something so they can feel good about themselves, even though they won't actually dare to do it anywhere where it would actually matter (I would like to invite them to try this in Malaysia or Indonesia).
Conversely, however, the conservative crowd has long seemed to believe that 377A is some bulwark against gay propaganda when, in reality, it was as dead for them as it was for left-wing activists. Not only was the law not applied in practice but even if it was it did absolutely nothing to protect conservative values. So, again, why make a fuss about it at all?
That's why the people I pity most are the politicians caught up in this cross-fire of insane irrationality, trying to find balance between two conflicted groups driven by little else than emotion.
It's like babysitting a group of 5 year olds fighting over a single toy.
As I wrote in 2019, 377A was being used as something to focus attention on so other topics are out of view. It has now outlived its usefulness given the negative press the country as a whole is getting from entire virtue-signalling nations. Not that it has to bend to what others think of it but why stick to something that is so nonsensical and contributes to negative PR? The time today is better for a legislative clean-up which will maintain the middle ground status quo, while removing 377A entirely.
Activists will now proclaim victory that achieves nothing, while social conservatives will appreciate the stronger definition of marriage in law - but the reality is that life will go on just as it has done for the past decades. There are no new privileges anybody gets to enjoy.
The babysitter has simply decided to give each group their own new toy, so they quit whining about this one
