Archive for October 2007
Argh… It’s Everywhere!
Being reliant on public buses to get around, I’m thankful that I live in an area that’s serviced predominantly by SMRT buses. Why, what’s wrong with SBS Transit buses, you ask?
Just this one incredibly annoying thing known as TVMobile.
Final Reflections on s 377A – For Now…
Lest I begin sounding like a broken record, this will be my last commentary on s. 377A for some time. It’s not what I envision to be my cause célèbre, unlike a contemporary of mine =)
Section 377A: The Final Bastion?
From the viewpoint of many conservatives, s. 377A is their Alamo — the final bastion for the forces of goodness, decency and propriety, the place where they must valiantly make their last stand. Lose s. 377A, and (if the conservatives are to be believed) the gates of hell will be irreversibly opened, unleashing wickedness and depravity upon our society: sexual licentiousness, bestiality, incest, pedophilia, necrophilia, and other unspeakable abominations.
Very gutsy, very sanctimonious… the only problem is that they have chosen the wrong place to make their stand.
Thio Li-Ann’s Speech in Parliament: Homosexual Sex and 377A — A Rebuttal
Prologue
Self-professed liberals have difficulty grasping this basic tenet of democracy: that whatever your argument, there is bound to be disagreement. “I refuse to engage you… you must be stupid not to see my reasoning” — that line, which I have seen ad infinitum, ad nauseum, reeks of a cop-out, a more urbane, unctuous way of saying, “Lalalalala… I can’t hear you… nanny-nanny-poo-poo!” If indeed we yearn for a true deliberative democracy, an effervescent civil society of free and equal citizens… then learn to accept that deliberation is a process, and that it is most effective when approached with maturity, thoughtfulness and prudence on all sides (notwithstanding that a real democracy entails giving all citizens a strong prima facie right to offend and insult one another, as I’ve argued before).
The Heart of the Matter
So let me go on to what I had intended to talk about: Thio Li-Ann’s speech in Parliament. First, some prolegomenal remarks on the blogosphere’s response. Most bloggers prefer to indulge in lampoonery, although they oblige by way of ‘logical analysis’ by pulling out a number of well-worn arrows from their quiver of “logical fallacies”, the old chestnuts like “strawman”, “false dichotomy”, “hasty generalization”, and so on. I’m afraid, however, that these labels don’t mean a thing if not backed by substantive arguments which rebut her arguments.
