A Tale of One Jack Chick and Two Religions

This is going to be quite an interesting case to watch. Since details are not yet available, I'm posting the article below mainly for future reference.

ST April 15, 2008
Couple charged under Sedition Act
By Elena Chong

A COUPLE were charged on Tuesday with distributing a seditious publication to two others.

Ong Kian Cheong, 49, and Dorothy Chan Hien Leng, 44, are alleged to have distributed The Little Bride, an evangelistic material, to Sembawang resident Irwan Ariffin last Oct 19.

They are also said to have distributed the same publication to one Madam Farharti Ahmad at her home in Woodlands on March 6 last year .

It is not clear why they face the Sedition Act and the Undesirable Publication Act when the publication is the same.

Ong, who works in a telecommunications company, and his wife, a bank employee, were represented by Mr Selva K. Naidu.

The police prosecutor sought an adjournment of the case pending a Health Sciences Authority on handwriting specimen.

The couple were freed on $10,000 bail each. Their passports were impounded.

The case will be mentioned on April 29.

Under the Sedition Act, the maximum penalty is a $5,000 fine and/or a jail term of up to three years.

The maximum penalty under the Undesirable Publication Act is a fine of up to $5,000 and/or up to 12 months.

I had not heard of "The Little Bride" before, so I got curious and decided to google to find out more. After a quick bit of Internet searching, I've found out that it is a evangelical cartoon/comic series produced by an American named Jack Chick, who has a reputation of being very controversial.

Direct access to Jack Chick's official website has been blocked by the Media Development Authority. However, if you google around, you can see some of Jack Chick's works on other websites / blogs. I'm not supplying the links.

I have to say that if I were a Muslim, I would probably be very, very offended by some of these works.

However, at the same time, I am wondering how the Christian community in Singapore would react to the prosecution of Ong Kian Cheong and Dorothy Chan. These two individuals probably saw themselves as faithfully and courageously seeking to spread the word of God (the Christian God, I mean).

This could be a very complex, challenging case for the prosecution, if the accused persons claim trial. Ahh, times like this, I almost wish I was still a Deputy Public Prosecutor.

P.S I am, by the way, neither Christian nor Muslim.

P.S.S Readers who wish to post any comments on this post, please avoid using inflammatory or religiously offensive language.
Gadis Bispak Imut

• Lihat Foto
• Lihat Foto

The Right to Use a Condom

So the Christians spoke loudly against homosexuality, and Parliament decided to retain section 377A of the Penal Code, a law that can put homosexuals in jail.

Religion is part of society, and it is inevitable that the very existence of different religions in Singapore - whether Christianity, Islam, Hinduism, Buddhism or whatever else - will influence the way Singapore is run. However, it is interesting to consider how each religious group may seek to influence society according to its own beliefs.

We know for instance that the Catholic Church is strongly against the use of contraceptives. But we also know that the Ministry of Health provides health advice like this, on its official website:

Persons who engage in high-risk behaviour i.e. multiple sexual partners, casual sex or sex with prostitutes, are strongly advised to use condoms to reduce their risk of HIV infection. Condoms should be used consistently during every sexual encounter ..... Persons who have unprotected sex while engaging in high-risk behaviour have a higher risk of HIV and other Sexually Transmitted Infections (STI).

What if tomorrow you opened your newspaper, and found that the Catholics in Singapore are now loudly telling Parliament that the Ministry of Health should remove such advice from its website? That such health advice (to use condoms) offends their religion and is immoral like homosexuality? That Singapore is "not ready" for such health advice to be stated in a public manner?

Does this scenario sound absurd or unlikely to you? Perhaps it is. Yet the Ministry of Health's advice is against Catholic teachings - quite unmistakeably so. In Catholic thinking, the use of contraceptives is wrong, even if by a married couple. Contraceptives are regarded as part of the Culture of Death - a term coined by Pope John Paul II. Wikipedia tells us that the term:

"...... is used in contemporary political discourse in many countries, including the United States and Poland, to describe supportive positions on certain subjects, such as abortion, euthanasia, human cloning, poverty and capital punishment which adherents of opposing positions deem to be inconsistent with their concept of a "culture of life". Some commentators would add to that list homosexuality, contraception and other phenomena perceived to attack marriage and the family."

See what many Americans are worried about in the US right now - "Bush Family Planning Appointee Called Contraceptives Part Of The ‘Culture Of Death’".

What are the possible implications of the Catholic Church being against the use of contraceptives? We don't have to use our imagination here, for real-life examples are readily available. See this article from the Guardian, which provides a somewhat international perspective "across four continents":

Vatican: condoms don't stop Aids
Steve Bradshaw, The Guardian
Thursday October 9, 2003

The Catholic Church is telling people in countries stricken by Aids not to use condoms because they have tiny holes in them through which HIV can pass - potentially exposing thousands of people to risk.

The church is making the claims across four continents despite a widespread scientific consensus that condoms are impermeable to HIV.

A senior Vatican spokesman backs the claims about permeable condoms, despite assurances by the World Health Organisation that they are untrue.

.... The WHO has condemned the Vatican's views, saying: "These incorrect statements about condoms and HIV are dangerous when we are facing a global pandemic which has already killed more than 20 million people, and currently affects at least 42 million."

The organisation says "consistent and correct" condom use reduces the risk of HIV infection by 90%. There may be breakage or slippage of condoms - but not, the WHO says, holes through which the virus can pass .

Thank goodness the World Health Organisation is doing what it can to correct this misinformation. Still it is a tough battle. From the Guardian article, we get a sense of the actual, day-to-day difficulties of combating such misinformation.

For example, the article relates how the director of an Aids testing centre was prevented from distributing condoms, because of church opposition.

A video produced by the Catholic Church (presumably an "educational" video) shows a nun advising her choirmaster (who was already infected with HIV) not to use condoms with his own wife because "the virus can pass through".

According to the Guardian article, the Church has been reiterating these sorts of claims (that condoms don't help to prevent AIDS) .... across "four continents", and "as far as apart as Asia and Latin America".

I don't know if such claims are being made here in Singapore, and if they are, to what extent. But if they are being made in Singapore, then this, in my opinion, would constitute a public health hazard.

Of course, the problem is that if you spoke up publicly on this issue, some Catholics might well say that you're being religiously offensive. But think of it this way - if you spoke up publicly on this issue and raised awareness of the importance of using condoms, you would be saving lives.

As opposed to contributing to death. I mean that literally .... I'm not just referring to the "culture" of it.
Gadis Bispak Imut

• Lihat Foto
• Lihat Foto

Race, Religion and Media

An article from AFP:

Lee Kuan Yew dismisses low press-freedom ranking for Singapore
SINGAPORE

(AFP) — Singaporeans are free to read whatever they want, the influential founding prime minister Lee Kuan Yew said of his country, which ranks near the bottom on a watchdog's index of press freedom.

Lee was referring to the Paris-based Reporters Without Borders' (RSF) annual ranking for 2006, which placed the city-state at 146 out of 168 nations, and lower than Zimbabwe at 140.

RSF cited "new legal action by the government against foreign media" for Singapore's slipping six places in the rankings.

"There's nothing that you'd want to read which you cannot read in Singapore," said Lee, who holds the influential title of minister mentor in the cabinet of his son.

"You can buy our newspapers and see whether we read like Zimbabwe..." he said Sunday night in a keynote address to the International Bar Association annual conference, which has attracted thousands of lawyers and jurists from around the world.

Lee said Singaporeans have wide access to information.

"Everybody's on the Internet. Everybody's got broadband. They've got cable television, access to all the information. You can blog. You can do anything you like," he said in the speech which drew frequent applause.

"But we do not allow certain subjects to be made bones of contention."

Lee said issues of race, language and religion had to be handled sensitively. Singapore is majority ethnic Chinese but with significant Malay and Indian minorities.

"A multi-racial, multi-religious society is always prone to conflicts," Lee said.

The city-state has bitter memories of past racial incidents in its early years and clamps down hard on anyone inciting communal tensions.

Whenever you hear Lee Kuan Yew talk about race and religion, you may get the impression that the multi-religious, multi-racial society is a rather unusual, rare species in the world, and furthermore suffers from some wicked, magical curse that dooms it to endless riots, civil war or other conflicts.

Actually, Singapore’s multiracial, multi-religious nature is hardly unique among modern cities. Think, for example, of Kuala Lumpur … Bangkok …. Melbourne … Sydney …. New York … London …. San Francisco …. Vancouver …. among others.

Even China, which we often think of as relatively homogeneous, has as many as 20 million Muslims, and 40 to 100 million Christians (according to these estimates).

We have to lose our traditional Singaporean mentality that just because some of our HDB neighbours are of a different skin colour or pray to a different God, we are all on the perpetual verge of beating each other up and therefore Singapore is constantly in peril.

As for RSF's rankings, well, LKY can dismiss Singapore’s low ranking for press freedom, but others will not be so easily convinced. The link between state and press in Singapore is just simply much, much, muuuuch too strong, for most people to believe that our press is independent of the ruling party's influence.

"Hey, Tony. Is it true that before you became the
Chairman of the Singapore Press Holdings Board of Directors,
you were the Deputy Prime Minister; the Minister of Defence;
the Minister of Education; the Minister of Finance; the Minister of Health
AND the Minister of Trade and Industry of Singapore ...?"
Gadis Bispak Imut

• Lihat Foto
• Lihat Foto

Learn, People, Learn.

The Straits Times has an article today about religious charities. It sounds like some churches have been busy trying to avoid being supervised by the Commissioner of Charities under the standard rules applicable to all charities.

ST Oct 5, 2007
No separate watchdog for religious charities
They'll come under office of Commissioner of Charities, but their 'special nature' will be taken into account
By Theresa Tan

SOME churches have urged the Charity Council to let them be governed separately from secular charities, but the council is standing firm.

It told The Straits Times there is 'no need' for a separate administrator to regulate religious charities.

Instead, churches and temples will still come under the Commissioner of Charities (COC) office, said the council, which advises the commissioner.

This is the strongest indication yet that all charities - secular and spiritual - will have to follow a new draft Code of Governance for charities to improve the way they are run.

While the code is not mandatory, charities which do not comply with its guidelines will have to explain why.

It is believed a number of churches expressed concern to the council when asked for feedback on the code. Some points raised were that:

* As spiritual leaders of the church, clergy cannot be excluded from the governing board. The code demands separation of the governing board and management staff, to ensure proper oversight of the charity.

* Rules on fund raising should not apply to churches. This is because church members give voluntarily as part of their religious beliefs and churches say they do not solicit from the public.

After the NKF scandal, I am suspicious of such arguments. The above article instantly reminded of past events such as this one:

Florida priests 'embezzled $8.6m from parishioners'
By Andrew Gumbel

Two Catholic priests in Florida stand accused of embezzling $8.6m (pounds 4.6m) from their parishioners over a 42-year period and spending the money on holiday houses, luxury travel, gambling in Las Vegas casinos and secret girlfriends.

The scandal, at St Vincent Ferrer Church, in Delray Beach, north of Miami, cast yet another embarrassing spotlight on a Catholic diocese that recently lost two bishops to child sex abuse scandals.

According to police who investigated the suspect finances at St Vincent Ferrer for more than a year, Fathers John Skehan and Francis Guinan acted as "professional money launderers" who took money from the collection plate and set up a network of slush-fund bank accounts to which only they had access.

Fr Skehan, 79, was a highly regarded priest whose congregation included many prominent politicians and public figures in southern Palm Beach County. According to the police, however, he also used laundered money to buy himself a condominium near Delray Beach, a cottage on the Cliffs of Moher in Ireland and a pub in Kilkenny, where he was born. The police complaint says Fr Skehan spent $134,075 in church money on a woman described as his girlfriend, another $11,688 on family members, and more than a $250,000 on himself - for car payments, dental work, property taxes and housing fees, and credit card payments.

Fr Guinan, 63, a longtime friend of Fr Skehan who took over the parish in 2003, owns a string of properties in the area. The complaint said he was a gambler who spent lavishly in casinos in Las Vegas and the Bahamas. He was also alleged to have made cash payments to his secret lover, who once worked as a bookkeeper at his old parish of St Patrick's in Palm Beach Gardens, and to have contributed more than $7,000 to the cost of the woman's son's education. He, too, racked up impressive dental bills. The complaint said he spent $15,000 of illicit funds on his teeth.

Suppose Father John Skehan now said: "As a spiritual leader of the church, I cannot be excluded from the governing board. I must be on the governing board and also part of management staff. Screw any potential conflict of interest." How would you feel?

Suppose Father Guinan now said, "Rules on fund raising should not apply to me. This is because church members give voluntarily to my church as part of their religious beliefs and I do not solicit from the public". What would you say?

Learn, people. Learn.

Gadis Bispak Imut

• Lihat Foto
• Lihat Foto

Honest Words From A Local Christian Boy On Singapore's Gay Issue

That's a very long title. I didn't come up with it. It was the title of a long email that a reader, T.W Tan, sent to me. With his permission I reproduce his email below (he did request that I not mention the name of his church). The email has been edited for clarity and brevity.

Hi, Mr Wang:

This is my first time writing to you. I appreciate your taking time to read this letter. I'm a 25- year old man who has been a Christian for more than 9 years. I currently attend XXXXX, one of the biggest mega churches in Singapore.

I've been following your blog for quite a while and read with great interest and enjoyment many of your articles. One of the most popular topics has been catching my attention recently (about homosexuality in Singapore).

I respect people with different religious / philosophical preferences. I do know many in our world today are not ready to accept the Christian faith just as I don't accept theirs. The same would apply to people of different sexual orientations. There has been so much buzz generated around the local gay community and Section 377. The potential for misunderstanding is unavoidable. Please consider that homosexuals are not the only ones on the receiving end of insensitive, hurtful remarks. In fact, as I see it, many Christians (whether here or round the world) are getting attacked for things that they are not guilty of saying or doing.

In the last few months, the war of words between the pro-gay supporters and the anti-homosexual Christians has been a burden in my heart. It's saddening to see the so-called 'righteous' believers declaring war against gays and at the same time, painful to know that people have very negative views of churches being gay 'witch hunters'. I decided that somebody has got to hear what I have to say.

Based on the Bible, homosexuality is indeed a sin. This belief is not based on some religious folks' puritan conclusion. The Holy Book itself states it loud and clear. However, while I'm not for homosexuality, I'm definitely not anti-gay. People who hear these words may dismiss me as a hypocrite. To the individuals with such narrow minds, consider this: Does your intense dislike of your spouse's smoking habit immediately make him/her your bitter enemy ? Does a father who hates dishonesty set out to destroy his 8-year old son for lying about his poor Math results? I believe many will find my remarks reasonable when they think seriously about it.

It would contradict the beliefs of my faith if I said (just to 'appease' people) that homosexuality is not sin. On the other hand, if I set myself against a person just because he's gay, then I'm also disobeying the word of God, which is to love people. So try to understand that this 'against the act but not the person' stance adopted by many good Christians is not based on hypocritical cowardice.

My next few points will likely infuriate my 'other' fellow Christians who find it satisfying to thump the Bible on gays. I do my best to understand the plight of local homosexuals. In fact, during my army days, I had a gay friend for whom I have a healthy respect and I believe that he was one of the nicest and most encouraging guys in camp. It would be disappointing to see overly zealous Christians embarking on what they so believed is a God-approved crusade and hurting people like my friend who just wants to live a peaceful, normal life but has to suffer because he is 'different'.

Well, shame on the zealots. Shame on the principal of a Christian secondary school for punishing a butch right in front of an assembly, her 'crime' for having short hair and looking too much a 'boy'. Shame on the Singapore pastor who mobilized fellow believers against the homosexual community
during one of those gay controversies. Shame on American preachers who are ready to blame gays for the 9/11 attacks. Shame on all those who are quick to condemn but fall short of being compassionate. I only hope that such believers are aware of the sin they are committing.

In closing, I also hope that Section 377 of the Penal Code will be done away with. Yes, you hear me right, straight from the mouth of a Christian. The way I feel it, these laws persecute gays. If adultery can be decriminalized, I don't see why Section 377 can't be scrapped. Really, it's time for the judiciary and general society to be fair and decide that homosexuals need not have to live in fear because of that law.

Lastly, thank you, Mr Wang, for your patience on going through my letter. I hope whatever I had written will help you better understand my position and that of like-minded Christians. And I also hope that your readers and fellow countrymen will share this understanding. Thanks again for your time.

Gadis Bispak Imut

• Lihat Foto
• Lihat Foto

Christianity and TAR

On an ongoing basis, I have been corresponding by email with several readers concerning TAR. Two of them mentioned that they are Roman Catholics, and had some questions, comments and thoughts about TAR from a Christian perspective.

As a starting point, let me point out that I am not a Christian, and what follows are merely my own views. My additional qualifier is that if you are not a Christian, then the rest of the post may make no sense to you and you can stop reading right around here. (This qualifier is similar to the one that I had previously used, when I wrote about TAR from the Buddhist perspective).

No person who considers himself a true Christian can at the same time logically dismiss TAR. The Christian faith is incompatible with a disbelief in TAR. This is because prayer and the effects of prayer are an integral aspect of Christianity, and prayer is also a fundamental example of thought affecting reality.

The Bible has numerous examples of people calling on God for help or guidance. In response, the help or guidance comes, and specific events begin occurring in reality.

Sometimes these events are mild and subtle, and they occur in the person's "internal" reality. For example, he receives, or he believes he receives, a message or instruction from within. Sometimes the events are big and unmistakeable, and they occur in the "external" reality (a drastic example would be the ten major calamities which Moses, through God, inflicted on Egypt).

Events can also be drastic and powerful within the person's internal reality (such as a very direct, "loud" message or instruction from within) or they can be mild and subtle in the external reality (for example, the person prays for help on a personal problem, and a few small events then happen in his external reality to solve his problem).

As a Christian, you probably have personally experienced, and/or know of other fellow Christians who have experienced, such events, in the four main permutations as described above. In other words, there are many examples - they are not merely biblical or historical.

So far, we have seen that prayer is a form of thought. You can regard it as a deliberate form of thought that a Christian adopts, when he seeks to establish a direct connection with the divine. What about other kinds of thoughts, that is to say, the kind of thoughts that a Christian thinks, not when he is praying, but merely going around his daily routine - driving, working, showering, feeding the cat etc?

The Christian God, as described in the Bible, is an omniscient one. Okay, that is subject to some debate among the theologians (there are some technical complications arising in connection with free will) but let's just make that assumption for the purposes of the present discussion.

The basic point is that even if you're not praying, the Christian God knows what's on your mind, yes? If you wish to have a much more direct connection with God, you will pray. But even if you don't, God knows what you're thinking, and what's happening in your life, and for that matter, just about everything else in your reality (think falling sparrows - Matthew 10:29).

Once you see the interrelationships, you will understand better the more "absolute" types of argument about how thought affects reality. Within the Christian framework, we could say that since every one of your thoughts is heard by God, and God has omnipotent powers over everything in your reality, every thought of yours has at least the potential to affect some aspect of your reality, because God can orchestrate it.

And perhaps you will even understand why the Buddhists place emphasis on disciplining the mind and the kind of thoughts that go through it. For example, in Buddhism, it is insufficient to refrain from doing cruel acts - one must endeavour not to think cruel thoughts at all.

(For Christians, I would add this - even if God always knows what's on your mind, it's when you pray that He knows you really want His attention. So that's when He'll give his attention to you. So pray, ok? Don't stop praying just because He always knows what's on your mind anyway).

One big difficulty that many Christians will have with TAR is that they may feel slightly appalled at the idea of altering their thoughts so as to get what they desire in reality - especially if what they desire are materialistic or physical or "selfish" in nature (for example sex, money, power, material things etc). The other big difficulty is that God, as seen from the Bible, has His own distinct personality, ideas and plans. He doesn't necessarily give you what you want - instead He may have his own very specific plans on what you should be doing and where you should go (think Jonah and the whale).

These are points which I will discuss in future (this post is long enough). Suffice to say for now that a lot of the difficulty stems from the idea that you are not God - that there is a separation between "you" and "God" and that there could be a difference between what you want and what He wants. In my opinion, this difficulty is an illusion, because the "you" does not even exist - there is in fact no separation between "you" and the rest of reality, or beween "you" and "God", whatever that is. But as I said, more on that, another time. It's a complex idea, not explainable in just a few short paragraphs.

We'll end today's post with some biblical verses, which I invite the Christians to reread and think about, with TAR in mind. This is taken from Matthew 7:7 and 7:8, and is part of one of the longest, most extensive set of public teachings (I think) given by Jesus, as recorded in the New Testament:

"Ask, and it will be given to you; seek and you will find; knock, and it will be opened to you. For everyone who asks receives, and he who seeks finds, and to him who knocks it will be opened.

Or what man is there among you who, if his son asks for bread, will give him a stone? Or if he asks for a fish, will he give him a serpent?

If you then, being evil, know how to give good gifts to your children, how much more will your Father who is in heaven give good things to those who ask Him!"

Don't take my word for it, on anything I've said in this article - I'm not even Christian, remember? This post is just food for thought. Go think about it for yourself. If you still have lots of questions after that, try asking your own Christian God directly for the answers. That, in my experience, tends to work quite well too. Ask, and it will be given.
Gadis Bispak Imut

• Lihat Foto
• Lihat Foto

Love, Life and Poetry

In a recent post, I mentioned my all-round philosophy to life. Here's an example of how it works.

I used to be in private practice in one of Singapore's top law firms. It paid very well and the work was very interesting. In fact, for my particular area of practice, no other firm in Singapore offered more challenging work. A year of experience there was worth two or three in other law firms. However, due to a chronic shortage of lawyers, the hours were very long.

Then my first child was born. Six months later, I quit the job. Mrs Wang quit private practice too. The kind of work/family balance we wanted was not going to happen, in a law firm environment.

I had absolutely no regrets. If I thought only in terms of the cost to my career, I would have had regrets. But the wiser thing to do was to consider life as a total package. I looked at my life as a whole, and the correct decision became quite clear to me. So I left private practice without hesitation, quite happily, and much to the dismay of my then-bosses. And I haven't looked back.

Now I have two kids. Recently, I've once again been spending less time with them than I would like. This time it's not the job. It's my exams. Fortunately, they will be over soon. Also, there is another difference, compared to the earlier days. Now the kids are older, more independent, and they have each other as playmates. I've been discovering that their new attitude is: if Daddy can join in, that would be great, but if Daddy can't, then that's fine too.

Gasp. They're growing up. That was quick.

A Worried Mother recently wrote to me - she is stopping work for a few years, to be a full-time mother to her newborn. I say this: don't fret about taking time off from your career. In the big picture of things, it does not matter whether you devoted 40 years of your life to your career, or 38, or 37. But the time with your child is very important, and once lost, doesn't come back.

Because kids are not kids forever. They grow up. Treasure the time you have with them, while you still have it. Because before you know it, they'll have their own lives and it will be time to let them go.

That's what Kahlil Gibran wants to tell you too:

Your children are not your children.
They are the sons and daughters of Life's longing for itself.
They come through you but not from you,
And though they are with you,
yet they belong not to you.
You may give them your love but not your thoughts.
For they have their own thoughts.
You may house their bodies but not their souls,
For their souls dwell in the house of tomorrow,
which you cannot visit, not even in your dreams.
You may strive to be like them,
but seek not to make them like you.
For life goes not backward nor tarries with yesterday.

You are the bows from which your children as living arrows are sent forth.
The archer sees the mark upon the path of the infinite,
and He bends you with His might
that His arrows may go swift and far.
Let your bending in the archer's hand be for gladness;
For even as he loves the arrow that flies,
so He loves also the bow that is stable.

Interestingly, in this other post of mine, a Buddhist reader, Chan, makes a bizarre argument against homosexuality. I thought I'd heard it all before, but this one is new to me. Chan says that homosexuality is wrong because the gay person, by not procreating, is being unfilial to his parents.

I then mentioned Buddhist monks. Are they, I asked, also unfilial to their parents, for choosing a life of celibacy and thereby not procreating? Chan's reply was that if the Buddhist monk seeks his parents' permission before entering monkhood, then the Buddhist monk is not unfilial. By extension, Chan says, if a gay person seeks his parents' permission before adopting a gay lifestyle, then the gay person's behavior becomes acceptable.

I'm struck by Chan's emphasis on filial piety. But personally, I think that in such a context, the principle has been stretched waaaay too far. Human beings are human beings, not the slaves or dogs of their parents. When they are adults, they must be left to make their own decisions and choose their own paths in life. Suppose you feel a strong calling to be a Buddhist monk. If your parents approve, that's great. But if they don't, then don't let their objections stop you.

Here is a real-life example: the Venerable Hyon Gak Sunim, Head Teacher at Hwa Gye Sah Temple in South Korea. Formerly, he was Paul Muenzen, the son of staunch Roman Catholics in the USA, and a graduate of Yale and Harvard. He pushed it all aside, to be a monk. Well, he's happy. And it's his life, after all. Not his parents'.

Speaking for myself, if my children grew up and decided to convert to Buddhism, I would not stop them. If they decided to convert to Christianity or Hinduism or Islam, I would not stop them either. In each case, I would only want to know that they have reflected and considered carefully and have concluded that this is what they really want for themselves. And if my children grew up and one day told me that they were gay, then in a strange way I think I would feel honoured. That they loved and trusted me enough to tell me such a thing, in a society where such things are often so deeply misunderstood.

In all cases, I think I would continue to love them, as a father should. I would respect their basic intrinsic right, as human beings, to choose their own paths in life, even if these are not paths I would have chosen for myself, or for them. How did Kahlil put it?

"You may give them your love but not your thoughts.
For they have their own thoughts.
You may house their bodies but not their souls,
For their souls dwell in the house of tomorrow,
which you cannot visit, not even in your dreams.
You may strive to be like them, but seek not to make them like you."

I like Kahlil's works. They contain such great wisdom. It's such a pity that our education system places little emphasis on Literature. It's just about the only subject that examines the condition of being human.

My next-door neighbours are always fighting and quarrelling, and it all started from the time when the handsome young Indian man there fell in love with a pretty young Chinese girl. That was years ago. Now they're married, but the man's parents are still fighting over this interracial marriage. Every now and then, they still throw the Chinese girl out of the house. So she sits outside the flat and cries. I see this as just another kind of Romeo & Juliet tragedy. If only the man's parents had read Shakespeare ... maybe they'd stop their bad behaviour.


Gadis Bispak Imut

• Lihat Foto
• Lihat Foto

Just A Little Cartoon

... to go with my recent post.
Gadis Bispak Imut

• Lihat Foto
• Lihat Foto