This is a written response to Terence Lee’s “Four out of Six Sex-Ed vendors are Christian organisations”.
To what end does it serve?
It is my personal aspiration, that our children be taught to create a moral compass for themselves. Of course, I am assuming that this moral compass is premised in the anti-Nietzschean notion that morality is not quite an erroneous concept. But back to the subject matter at hand:
Before our children can actually chart some moral trajectory for themselves however, breadth and depth of information is necessary. By merely leaning on an obvious Christian formulation of sexual morality, there is not just a flagrant disregard for how complex and varied the world operates with various other codes and conventions peculiar to different cultures and polities, it also entrenches them in a myth that there can and should only be an absolute morality, and in this case, one conspicuously espoused by Christian traditionalists.
Frankly, I have been fatigued by arguments from either side of this incursion of religious values into our society. However religious these values are or not not, whatever they stand for or not, whether they align with “mainstream society” or not, I think we need to be discerning about the message they convey. What is the essence of it? Is it only disdain for what that does not conform?
At the heart of the entire sexual morality debate and by outsourcing sex education to these Christian-affiliated organizations, it seems that MOE is condoning a climate of alienation and exclusivist perspectives – packaged in “values”, and hawked under an umbrella label of the “family” which we know in our modern age takes on variable undertones and structures – essentially denigrating those with different philosophical/moral and practical convictions of “family”, demonizing these people’s very existence and the terms and conditions in which they negotiate their worlds.
This is precisely for the want of an embracing humanist worldview that this society makes decisions predicated on ossified institutions, bureaucracies, structures, and their sometimes anachronistic construction of man and reality, utterly relegating real-world complexities and the quotidian experiences of human beings to the shadow of inconvenience. To put it simply, MOE is out-of-touch with the ever-changing intricacies of the global situation and our children will grow up in this ignorance.
In fact, seeing sex as a moral issue instead of a human one is a problem in itself. Sex education is important, no one denies that. It is therefore disingenuous when MOE asserts, “MOE does not condone promiscuity, sexual experimentation by teenagers or promote homosexuality. MOE teaches students what homosexuality is, and that homosexual acts are illegal. MOE teaches the values held by the majority, whether they are religious or not.” What MOE is in the business of here is not education, it is sexual policing. And it has found natural allies in the church, the provenance of such hate-mongering “values held by the majority” in the very first place.
MOE’s policies with regard to sexual education have been poor, their decisions to bring in these Christian-affiliated vendors even poorer. I cannot help but feel miserable about the inane provinciality of our government and its agencies. I ache for our future, because it will be taught to hate those different than them; I ache for our future, because today will never change.
And oh yes, I’m still a criminal, will always be one in this Singaporean society. And so are many of my family and friends, your family and friends. Ladies and Gentlemen, this is the real doomsday.
My heart aches for the LGBT students in the classroom. I can only wonder (as I hadn’t a LGBT student myself) how it feels to be told bluntly in your face that an intrinsic part of your self identity is “illegal”. What good does it serve by telling a LGBT child she is illegal? Singapore is a laughing stock.