WHEN GAY USED TO MEAN HAPPY

So the west can keep its opinions to itself. They condemn Malaysia’s Internal Security Act and then sends its army to invade other countries to kidnap people and detain them without trial and torture them with water boarding.

NO HOLDS BARRED

Raja Petra Kamarudin

Today being 1st February and with the 10th of February looming upon us when the court will decide whether to allow Anwar Ibrahim to go home or whether to send him to jail, the issue of gay rights will once again hit the spotlight.

Of course, the west is going to express outrage if Anwar gets sent to jail. They will declare that it is the right of two individuals of legal age to have consensual sex, even with someone of the same gender.

The west will try to make it sound like they are very liberal while we in the east are still very archaic. Well, don’t you believe it, same-sex marriages were legalised in England, Wales and Scotland (but not yet in ‘conservative’ Ireland) only last year, which is only a few months ago.

Up to the year 2000 there was still a ban on LGBT people serving openly in the armed forces in the UK and in the following year, 2001, the age of consent for gay people was lowered to 16, the same as for ‘straight’ people. For seven years since 1994 it was still 18.

However, LBGT people still suffered discrimination and it was in only in 1999 that the first protection against discrimination for gay people came into law.

In 1553, under the Buggery Act, same-sex activity was banned and punishable with the death penalty. The death penalty was abolished in 1861 although buggery was still a crime — buggery meaning anal sex, oral sex or sex with an animal.

About 400 years later in 1967, gay sexual activity was decriminalised in England and Wales under the Sexual Offences Act, as long as it is consensual, in private, and involves adults over 21. In 1981 it became legal in Scotland and in 1982 in Northern Ireland. About 30 years before that convicted gays were chemically castrated or else they would be sent to jail and thousands suffered this fate.

Hence the United Kingdom treated the gay community even worse than we in the east did. And it was only very recently that they became ‘civilised’. And now they are going to tell us that we are still uncivilised and are living in the past, which is a load of bull considering how they treated their gay community before this.

So the west can keep its opinions to itself. They condemn Malaysia’s Internal Security Act and then sends its army to invade other countries to kidnap people and detain them without trial and torture them with water boarding.

The west condemns Malaysia’s Sedition Act that punishes you for saying the wrong thing but at the same time will arrest you if you scream ‘Long Live Al Qaeda’ or ‘Viva Hitler’.

Yes, we are talking about the west that punishes policemen for negligence when a police dog dies but defends policemen who shoot an unarmed person to death just because that person happens to be black.

I don’t think we need to take too much notice of what the west has to say about us when what they say is oozing with hypocrisy.