Singapore’s government’s getting sexual today as a new bill looks to strike down laws banning oral and anal sex. While it may sound like a great development for all people, the gays are getting left out in the cold:
Oral and anal sex in private between consenting heterosexual adults would be legalized under a bill introduced in Singapore’s parliament on Monday.
Under the city-state’s first major penal code amendments in 22 years, a section criminalizing “carnal intercourse against the order of nature” would be repealed.
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But while the bill takes a softer line on heterosexual sex, a ban on acts of “gross indecency” between males will remain.
The proposed bill highlight’s Singapore’s strained perception of progress. Though willing to liberalize laws for straight people, the cultural zeitgeist still leans right. The government flexed its muscle earlier this year by cracking down on gay pride festivities.
Though gays are still held down politically, they may be getting a boost in the education system. About 110 teachers, administrators and students met last month to discuss the gays’ place in the school system. One out teacher commented:
Many life lessons are transmitted to students through this form of bonding… When parents require gay teachers not to talk about their personal lives, it curtails their ability to connect with their students, and to be themselves in the classroom.
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The younger (these children) are exposed to these issues, the fewer hang-ups they may have when they grow up, and they may be more certain about who they really are.
Not all gay teachers agree, however. Another attendee says he’d rather not get into the logistics of his love life:
How about we take this to the next level?
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I’d prefer not to impose my personal values or beliefs on them, while they are still relatively immature… Being too open at this point will only cause unnecessary anxiety within the school, and among parents.
All the drama’s apparently too high a price to pay for real education.
Lek
This decision is odd considering that Singapore’s former prime minister, Lee Kuan Yew, father of current Prime Minister Lee Hsien Loong, said in April that gay sex should be decriminalized. Usually, when Lee speaks, the country follows. The laws are a holdover from British colonial days. In any event, after the string of ridiculous gay pride crackdowns and this, Singapore is scratched off my list of destinations.