Laying 377A to Rest - Why It Does Not Matter

Has the PAP retreated from the fray?
Have the silent (straight and gay) minority been shortchanged?
Have the fundamentalists prevailed?

It really does not matter. And I will tell you why:

LHL did the clever thing.
The rhetoric might upset the vocal intellectual elite in their hallowed realms of academic theory, but stark reality has and MUST prevail: it was the smart move to lay 377A to rest.

Believe me, I do not and will never buy the flawed reasoning of criminalizing homosexual activity for society's Greater Good, nor the rabid rantings of certain middle-aged pre-menopausal Fundamentalist law lecturers who think they are on some messianic mission to save our society from certain ruin.

There was no way out of this one: at the eye of the storm lies the heart of the matter, I think in my humble opinion - that Singaporeans have become a truly plural, polarised and politicised populace. (pardon the alliteration & bad punctuation, couldn't resist!)

No civilised, progressive country that seeks to represent its people by democratic and secular law would accept homsexual criminalization on grounds that God Said So. But this is the essential argument posed by our right-wing friends, the rhetorical social deterioration of the family, the obliteration of moral "values", of General Human Goodness (what IS that anyway?) is just a bunch of badly plagiarised cut-and-paste logic from "Our Shared Values", which you can find on the back of just about every generic brown exercise book cover used in our primary schools.

That said, the Government is not about to address or discuss the philosophy of democratic principles in our penal code, or the logical soundness of the anti-repeal-camp's arguments. The entire saga that has played out only served ONE purpose, and that is to reveal starkly and embarassingly their abject FAILURE to portray the nation as one happy family unified in a common ideology of what is the Proper Life. The way I see it, the iron rule of racial and religious "tolerance" has masked an unmistakeable truth, that the ignorant who tolerate are potentially fundamentalists who discriminate.

It shouldn't come as a surprise, and more divisions will reveal themselves in time to come. The cleavage in the populace is now based on what is acceptable sexual orientation, and the battle was played out unfortunately on something that should never have been -- our system of justice. To do nothing was the only thing to do, damage control was necessary.

Now LHL has a bigger problem on his plate: the battle lines are drawn, and each warring faction has shown their strength. While the vast majority of the population is still bored by the whole shenanigan that just played out in Parliament and distracted by the property market boom, what can he do before the next civil war of ideologies bursts forth?

So don't get your panties in a knot!
It's no big deal....LHL said so himself, chill people!
They're not gonna use entrapment in gay clubs, or do anything really nasty that we aren't already used to.
Let the fundamentalists howl and have their day. No turf was actually lost or won, and the real battle has yet to come.