When Tharman meets Tommy on tolerance and 377A.

They talked about many things relating to inequality. You name it, the per capita income, stratification, the Oxfam report, the Human Capital Index, some escalator moving upward, and even a toilet attendant. 

Tharman met a toilet attendant in a loo and he described him as a “gentleman”. They had a chat and he said that he “was struck by how good his English was”. 

Here’s further info on the toilet attendant.

“He started working...eight years ago - full-time job, all the benefits, started off with $1,200, now earning well above $2,000. His employer had sent him for training, including English language training with Kaplan, even had to sit a rest on a computer.”

That’s an interesting info on how some employers are investing in human capital. And although the IPS conference was about diversities, inequality and class divide, there is one part towards the end (of the article) that caught my attention. 

This is what Professor Koh said in the dialogue: -

“There is a new challenge in Singapore - this is the challenge of growing intolerance.”

Prof Koh recounted with Tharman that “a mutual friend of ours was recently invited by one of our religious organisations to speak at a conference on a secular topic. He accepted, prepared his paper and then he was disinvited. Why was he disinvited? Because he signed a petition to repeal the 377A. You know, we can disagree, but there is no need to demonise each other”.

Here is Tommy’s plea: “And I would make also a plea to the Government to show greater tolerance. I hope that going forward, the Government will no longer ban movies, withdraw book grants. Let’s be big-hearted. We have reached a stage of political and cultural maturity where we could accommodate different points of view. It is a plea.”

Lesson? I know I should be writing about inequality and diversity, but intolerance is one subject that is related to that too. 

I myself have received some feedback, directly and indirectly, about my writings too, especially about 377A. I have come to know of late that I have undermined my beliefs because I took the “neutral” stand on 377A. I did not sign the petition for stay (neither did I sign to repeal). 

Maybe, if there is a word or two to describe me, I am agnostic about 377A. 

The truth is, I don’t quite subscribe to the slippery slope argument because I am wary of another slippery slope, and Tommy’s friend was a victim of it - he was disinvited because of his view, that is, he signed the petition to repeal based on his conviction and suddenly whatever he has to say about an unrelated topic is tainted by that personal act. As Tommy said, he was demonised.

If I may peel the many layers of intolerance, I believe at its core, it is about the right to be right. And this right to be right ossifies into an obsession when you endow it with religious fiat. 

That is also how face-value tolerance can easily mutate into intolerance when being right becomes monopolistic, exclusive and institutionalised. This is where the insidious effects of groupthinking comes in. That is why they say madness in an individual is the exception, while it is a rule in groups.

Somehow, there is a mental club in their mind and membership has its privileges. And membership is simple: you just have to think like them, period. Your beliefs, your creed, your actions must gel (or flow) with theirs, and dissent is treated as a form of rebellion. 

There is a saying that in our infinite ignorance, aren’t we all equal? But there are those out there who are strongly opposed to that view. They feel that they are not equal to those who disagree with them. They are simply superior to them because their views cannot be wrong.

That is what the obsession to be right has turned some of us, that is, we become intolerant of people who are tolerant of others. Mind you, such tolerance is not because they agree with their lifestyle or belief. On the contrary, they have their disagreements but such disagreements do not cause them to demonise another. 

Let me end with this common saying often used by those who feel that those who disagree with them have strayed and betrayed the faith. 

“The only thing necessary for evil to triumph is for good men to do nothing.”

First, we need to define evil. We don’t condemn someone or group as evil based on some differences of opinion. 

Second, good men? We all have our flaws and the only thing good or redeeming about us may just be our ability to despise ourselves for our hypocrisy, inauthenticity and self-serving motives. 

And lastly, “do nothing”? Well, it really depends right? Just because someone is doing, or thinking about it differently from another doesn’t mean that he is doing nothing right? 

In fact, in the larger scheme of things, it might just be the wise thing to do at that time (for it is said that the fool is silent because he has nothing to say, but the wise is silent because he has a lot to say). Cheerz.

The ideal family unit? A pot of curry may just help?

I wonder, what is the ideal family unit? Is there an ideal family unit in the first place?

Is this part of the naturalistic fallacy?

That is, whatever is good is reducible to what ought to be, and what ought to be therefore ought to be the norm of every society; yet that is deemed unfounded, and fallacious.

So, is DJ Shobha Nair defining what ought to be when she dismissed the application of a gay Singaporean, who paid US$200k to father a boy through surrogacy arrangements in US, and then applied for adoption in Singapore to transfer US citizenship to Singapore citizenship for his son?

According to The Economist, one of its articles entitled "Rules are thicker than blood" (Jan 13) described DJ Nair's ruling as having "firmly laid out that the ideal family unit, in the eyes of the Singaporean state, entails the marriage of a man to a woman."

In the papers, our Singapore High Commission Foo Chi Hsia came out to defend DJ Nair's ruling on the "ideal family unit".

Foo said: "Our values and social norms on what makes for a stable family unit are conservative and shape the Government's policies and rules of adoption."

Further, in response to The Economist article deriding "Singapore's norms on what constitutes a family as 'Victorian", Foo added that "pushing for rapid social change, especially on contentious moral issues, risks polarising society and producing unintended results"".

She wrote: "In Singapore, nearly all children are born and raised in wedlock (not out of wedlock), starkly different from what now happens in the West. The Economist may think Singapore is quaint and old-fashioned, but time will tell if a cautious approach to social change is wiser."

Lesson? Just one.

Funny, this back-and-forth between the Western media and our ambassadorial front-liners has been going on for decades. It never ends.

And this reminded me of curry.

Some years back, Singapore had a curry dispute. It's a tale about two next-door neighbours: one, an Indian family, and the other, a migrant family from China.

The news about it first came out in Today on 8 August 2011, and Sharon Teng has written a good summary of it.

It started innocent enough: it's the smell of curry from the Indian household that stirred the rift.

The Chinese family could not tolerate the curry smell, and out of consideration, "the Indian family would shut their doors and windows whenever they cooked curry."

However, the smell still sneaked into the Chinese household, and they asked the Indian family "to refrain from cooking the dish altogether."

The Indian family refused, and both families ended up in CMC in a bid to settle the curry dispute.

This was how the dispute was resolved as reported:-

"The settlement that was reached following the mediation was that the Indian family would cook curry only when their Chinese neighbours were out. In turn, the Chinese family acceded to their Indian neighbours’ request to try out the curry dish."

Strangely, the settlement divided Singaporeans and even foreigners.

Some found it "unfair"; others thought that the intolerance of the Chinese family was bordering on bigotry. Still others blamed the settlement as not being culturally sensitive, and against our multiracial and inclusive society. What's wrong with the fragrance of curry?

Even our law minister Shanmugam weighed in.

In brief, he asked Singaporeans and all to respect the settlement which was reached by mutual accord.

He "cautioned Singaporeans against letting the unhappy feelings generated by the curry dispute ferment into a blanket dislike of all foreigners in general."

Imagine that, one curry pot boiling along the corridor of two families of different races could actually cause such mischief and provoked such national commotion.

Alas, if one woman (Rosa Parks) could trigger the civil rights movement and one man (Hitler) could start the second world war, it should then come as no surprise to us that two neighbours disputing over a pot of curry could very well test the racial and cultural unity of our little garden city.

This brings me to the back-and-forth between the Western media and our foreign delegates about DJ Nair's judgment.

What is the "ideal family unit" anyway?

(And one is completely misconceived if he thinks DJ Nair is even trying - in the faintest of hint - to define or epitomise the "ideal family unit" in the judgment. She in fact categorically excluded that to set the record straight. Her grounds were mainly to balance and keep the object of the legislature and the various enactments consistent with each other).

So, notwithstanding the backhand sarcasm in that reference in The Economist article, the issue is really not about what is ideal or what is not. Neither is it about what is natural or what is not.

From a secular point of view, I would not even bring in religion to state categorically with religious zeal on what is morally non-negotiable, and end the whole debate there and then (or open the Pandora's box to endless arguments).

In this postmodern environment distorted by the polarisation of values based on questionable opinions online, most of the thinking has already been done for us.

They come in prefabricated chunks, backed by suspecting sources and dubious stats, repeated ad nauseam, and authenticated by arbitrarily ruling out other contending views not by examining their merits, but by conveniently stamping a "fake news" on them, thereby throwing the baby out together with the bathwaters.

As such, all the netizens have to do nowadays is to just pluck from the lowest hanging fruit of mouth-watering rationality and be off with a sense of self-smugness about what should be just right and what should be just wrong.

In the end, taking my cue from the curry dispute, it is really about cultural sensitivity, being good neigbours, and learning to get along. Let’s leave the big ideological arguments for another day.

We are essentially still conservative at heart, and communalist in spirit. We still enjoy a good spicy pot of curry at home, and if the smell gets to you, the solution is not to insist we stop enjoying curry altogether.

Let’s settle our differences with deeper mutual understanding, always keeping an open mind, and on some unavoidable occasions, politely walk on by when the smell happens to exceed one’s level of tolerance. 

Being good neighbours is ultimately more than just about fussing over a pot of curry. It's essentially about sharing a common corridor, but living by different values in the home. Cheerz.

Homosexual crossroad: You shall know them by their fruit.

Some days, you might find yourself in a tight spot. Here is one for the parents, picture this:-

"One day, your grown-up child comes to you and confesses that he plans to marry his same-sex partner."

As a Christian father, I am neither openly liberal nor strictly traditional. Those labels or categories often confuse me more than they clarify issues. 

But concerning that future hypothesis, if it should happen to me, I would have to make a choice in accordance to what and how I believe as a Christian. 

Should I then send my son packing and disown him, or should I learn to respect his choice, maintain my own belief, and attend the ceremony anyway (since he is my son)? 

Am I a liberal for doing the latter, or a strict traditionalist for doing the former? Which of the choice is right then, or more right? 

Or worse, have I failed as a heterosexual father who himself is committed to a heterosexual marriage by taking for granted that my son will grow up to be a heterosexual Christian too? 

Yestersay's papers make it no easier for me. It is entitled "Church council's position on homosexuality "has not changed"". 

It reports that "the leaders of the National Council of Churches of Singapore (NCCS) have reiterated to its members that it "does not condone homosexual practice and...considers the homosexual lifestyle as sinful and unacceptable.""

Well, to be honest, I don't and can't expect the church's position to ever change. And I am quite relief that the NCCS also added "sinful" and "unacceptable" to the last sentence above.

This makes it easy for me to discern/predict the direction of the church when it comes to dealing with homosexuals. But such relief is temporary. 

Why? Because of a recent Sunday Times' article, that's why. 

It is an article about the gradual but pervading cultural change of mindset and attitude towards homosexuality.

Like it or not, in that article on Dec 17, it reports that "there is now a growing acceptance among Christians of the idea that homosexuality itself is not wrong, even though a majority of them continue to believe that homosexual acts are a sin."

I will leave it to you to reconcile "not wrong" and "sin" appearing in that sentence. But if you separate the professing homosexual from the practising homosexual, the reconciliation is somewhat possible. 

Yet, if you delve deeper, the reconciliation is still an uncomfortable one. Here is what I mean. 

If homosexuality in itself is "not wrong", but the act is a sin, does it make homosexuality by profession an "acceptable sin" while classifying homosexuality by practice an "unacceptable sin"?

I guess it is still excusable (or redeemable) to admit to having homosexual tendency (thoughts), but resist engaging in the abominable act, right? This makes hating the sin (by acting it out), but loving the sinner (by admission only) much easier for Christians, right? 

Mind you, in Christendom, the professing homosexual is still a sinner, but because he resists the act, he is "less of a sinner" and is readily acceptable to Christians as compared to someone who professes the tendency and acts it out. Maybe this parallel example may shed some light (or less light) here.

I can imagine a married man admitting that he is thinking of someone else other than his wife on regular intervals, but then proudly tells his wife that he has always successfully resisted such temptation. Therefore, she should have no fear of him going astray. 

And then the husband goes on to assure his wife that it is safe to continue to love him, while hating the adulterer in him. You can say (with some strain of language) that the husband is a "professing adulterer", but thankfully not a practising adulterer. 

Does it then turn the husband's adulterous tendency into an acceptable sin? Mm...

Now, let's go back to the papers.

While NCCS gave no comment to the Sunday Times' article, it did make its stand clear that "while it sees homosexual acts as sinful, (the NCCS) said it is also empathetic that "homosexuals should be regarded and treated no less as persons of worth and dignity", and rejects homophobia and every kind of discrimination against homosexuals.""

Ultimately, the NCCS's goal is to love the sinner, in this case, referring to both the professing and practising homosexual, and it wrote in a letter that "to care for same-sex attracted persons causes our member churches to keep seeking appropriate and compassionate ways to relate and reach out to them with the life-changing power of our faith, namely the gospel of forgiveness and new life in Jesus Christ."

Lesson? Alas, how I wish the world is less complex, more black and white. 

How I wish that we can call a spade a spade, that is, we don't give someone a spade for digging and then ask him to pretend that it is a giant spoon for eating. 

In the end, we have to make up our mind about this homosexual conundrum. 

Undoubtedly, in my view, a practising homosexual is "more wrong" than one who professes to having homosexual tendency. But, is the distinction even helpful? Aren't I being pretentious? Recall the adulterer of a husband, but only in thought?

Further, does thinking about it sooner or later lead one to cross the line? Should one play with fire and hope that he or she will not get burn? 

What is the Church's stand on that distinction anyway, that is, is it an "acceptable sin" if one is merely a professing homosexual, and an "unacceptable sin" if one is a practising homosexual? Is it right?

If it is adultery, we can rely on what Jesus once said that we are as guilty as our thoughts about it. But how does it apply to a professing homosexual then? Maybe, not all sins are created equally?

And ultimately, we Christians have to show them love, compassion and patience when we engage them (regardless of the distinction and pardon my implied distinction of "we" and "them") with the end goal of asking them to repent (seek forgiveness) and lead them into a "new life in Jesus Christ". 

For a sin is still a sin, whether one practises it or thinks only about it right?

If so, how should I engage my son in that hypothetical example should he come to me with that "abominable" admission and compound the "abomination" by telling me that he has decided to carry out the "unholy" consummation?

I guess if it really happens to me, I will have to cross the bridge when I reach there as I do not at this moment (or at any moment) have the answer. 

Nevertheless, I assure you this, it will be a long, long, long walk across that seemingly irreconcilable bridge. 

And I guess, sin is always other people, because the world is much, much clearer that way. It is only when sin becomes us, that is, when it happens in our household that the line gets blurred and agonizingly less clear. 

And when it happens to other people, it is undeniably unacceptable for us. We naturally adopt an uncompromising stand. We may even go ballistic about it.

But when it happens closer to home, we are dumbstruck. Eventually, to preserve the relationship, we have to find ways and means to justify its acceptance one way or another (or we can go ballistic and disown our son).

This is where compassion, empathy and sympathy really bite, and the cognitive dissonance really deepens. There is thus no clear answers to it. It is also where labels or roles like "liberal" or "traditionalist" will be the least helpful. 

At such time, the only role I know is to continue to be his father, that is, to love and to seek to understand, to suspend judgment and be a listener, and to assure him that I will always put relationship above theology, ideology and dogma. 

After that, I will take him by the hand, and walk that long, long bridge together. And it is still our relationship that will heal the gap, not our conflicting beliefs. Cheerz. 

Postscript: Strange, but I once had this dream about what Jesus said: You will know them by their fruits.

This dream is about a landowner, who owns a huge plot of fertile land that stretches to the horizon.

As his fields are fertile, his harvest were abundant, aplenty. His land yielded much fruits, and he was incredibly wealthy. 

At first, he invited all the people into his mansion for feasting. Every harvest day was a day of mass celebration. 

Then, one day, he thought to himself: "Hey, why should I allow people to feast for free? I should charge them. They should pay a price for the fruits."

So, the landowner charged the people per entry. But it didn't stop there.

After some time, he thought to himself: "Hey, wait a minute, why should I let everyone in? Some are less well dressed. Some smell. Others have poor table manners. I think I should restrict the guest list."

So, he invited only those who meet his expectation. 

Every harvest day, the crowd still congregated at his gates. But not all were invited. Many were turned away. They just do not satisfy the criteria. They just can't pay the high entry price. They just can't live up to the farmer's expectations. 

Eventually, the guest list dwindled; from everybody who were nobody to only those who were somebody as seen through the eyes of the landowner. 

Does our church then run the risk of being like the landowner who only allow some to enter and restrict the rest? Note that such restriction/ discrimination can be implied by our unspoken words and unintended conduct. 

If the harvested fruits represent the fruits of the Spirit like love, kindness and patience, has the church become a storehouse of virtues, a museum of masterpieces, where we are always telling people how to live their life, but we are still struggling to live them out ourselves? 

Do we just demonstrate the fruits within the church, but outside of it, we are basically rotting inside?

And one author asked: "Can Christianity experience for itself the things it has preached for others?" (Brian D. McLaren). 

Food for thought?