Now, all this (Law Minister Shanmugam’s remarks on the encroachment of religion into public space) rather reasonable. When in public it’s better to speak with a secular vocabulary than a religious one because you reach more people. However, this comes rather hollow when one recalls the 2007 debate of 377A. PM Lee Hsien Loong observed then in Parliament:
“People who are presently willing to live and let live will get polarised and no views will change, because many of the people who oppose it do so on very deeply held religious convictions, particularly the Christians and the Muslims and those who propose it on the other side, they also want this as a matter of deeply felt fundamental principles.”
In other words, because the religious folks (Christians and Muslims) feel so strongly about it, we should leave 377A alone. I followed the debate closely and no where did the religious conservatives present their arguments in purely secular terms, unlike the anti-377A camp which offered arguments based on social history, logic, ongoing medical research, economics and cosmopolitan human rights discourse. The religious conservatives, meanwhile, based their arguments on “values” found in their holy scripture.
So what does this mean for local political discourse? It seems like the government seeks to promote secular values when religion becomes too aggressive, and yet turn to religion as imprimatur when it’s politically convenient. This is of course a no-win situation. It turns off religious people who believe that religious values cannot help but underpin their political and social views, while alienating secularists when exclusive religious views are given priority over inclusive worldviews.
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Read the rest of the article at GROUNDNOTES.
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What this shows is that our leaders were contradicting themselves.
Veer on the side of secularism if it suits them; veer to the whims of religious people if such veering seems to be more advantageous for them.
The North Americam Indians had a name for adopting such an attitude – speaking with a forked tongue!
Can TOC not become like Temasek Review where they just copy and paste half of other people’s articles just to get people to visit their site?