LETTER | Sexuality issues and Malaysia's future: Let us ponder

LETTER | The recent watch raid and confiscation have become public fodder. Social media is overflowing with sarcasm, ridicule and shock, while news media has not spared in reporting updates. 

The ministry responsible for what was perceived as a raid on some rainbow-coloured wristwatches finally clarified that the confiscation of the few hundred timepieces was because the design featured the words 'LGBTQIA2S'.

That their swoop down had nothing to do with rainbows. 

In any country, a government is responsible for ensuring the nation's laws are not violated. 

So in Malaysia, as lesbian, gay, bisexual, transgender, and queer (LGBTQ) is outlawed - given our outdated, archaic Printing and Publishing Act, the raid appears justified. 

But we need to reflect, debate and think through this problem of sexuality, ie discrimination, prejudices, honour (or dishonour) and vis-a-vis our belief systems and the legal direction we are ploughing through. 

Until and unless we can all sit down and think through rationally and with compassionate understanding, any amount of laws, raids and condemnation will not take the nation into the future world that has already started unfolding worldwide. 

Civilisation is so dynamic that laws, prejudices, enactments, philosophies and society's governing must evolve for communities to remain relevant inevitably. 

What is Malaysia cut out to be if it wants to enable its people to exist as a society that can embrace and thrive in the changing world order? 

If LGBTQ is outlawed in the country officially, will there be no more LGBTQ in our society? 

Experience, the mother of all teachings, tells us that even the death penalty instituted in 1983 and finally abolished in 2023 in Malaysia failed to eradicate our society of several criminal ailments. The drug menace is just one such example. 

Society evolves with philosophical thought as its centrifugal force. 

We also need to be a member of the brave new world by asking serious questions and intending to see things beyond the intellect and will. 

Who gives governments (a reference to policymakers and political leaders) the inherent and cardinal authority to determine the directions of creation in its myriad forms?

Is it not true that sexuality is not an absolute but a variable, varied and complex as creation is in its totality? 

And precepts and perceptions relating to sexuality have these not kept changing down through the millenniums of human civilisation? 

To state that only heterosexuality is the only reality is to look into creation with one eye blindfolded. 

We need objectivity if we are to recognise that there has been since the dawn of creation and will always be there as long as the creation is alive on this planet, sexuality existing in its varied forms, ie sexual behaviour and attitudes. 

Human laws (enacted by governments and religious interpreters) cannot obliterate the power, presence, and manifestations of creation, specifically as seen in the varied forms of human sexuality. 

Whether we ban, deny, discriminate, vilify or banish all forms of sexuality that are not akin to heterosexuality or recognise its existence, humankind is continuously evolving in its understanding of creation. 

The truth is the world around us is constantly changing - physically, emotionally, intellectually. 

Faith, understood as believing in the things we cannot see nor understand, is gaining a new and more profound meaning around us. 

Knowledge is fluid

Malaysians, especially policymakers and those who want us to believe that they have the sole God-given mandate to interpret and lay down the rules for a society need to recognise that knowledge is not absolute but fluid and constantly evolving. 

And if we still believe that heterosexuality is the only heavenly-ordained way forward and that LGBTQ is outlawed,  then we need to pose even more serious questions. 

What do we say about child marriages and allowing grown-up men to marry underaged children? 

What do we say of religions that propagate celibacy, where their clergypersons must refrain from all sexual relations, although humans are sexual beings? 

What do we say of those who uphold a strict diet of zero sexual consumption, given their ancient belief systems? 

Suppose sainthood and sagehood (as we have come to know all through civilisation) can only be attained by renouncing marriages and sexual relationships.

In that case, it means that utopia on earth is only possible when sexuality is negated absolutely. 

Indeed the day we can grow out of our blinkered views, the day we can embrace all precepts and perspectives of creation where we see humans as mere travellers through civilisations, only then can we keep our societies progressing forward. 

The views expressed here are those of the author/contributor and do not necessarily represent the views of Malaysiakini.