The religion-LGBT debate has grown unabated over the past few years, pitting social conservatives who claim to uphold traditional family values against those of a more liberal bent, preaching “tolerance” and the “freedom to love”. This debate has been argued on many levels: whether or not public libraries should curtail books with controversial content etc.
However, Singaporeans must re-look at the moral questions which lie at the center of this issue, especially in terms of penal code 377A, of which its Constitutionality is being reviewed by the Court of Appeal. Social conservatives who support this law have one fundamental premise: government should and ought to use their authority to uphold traditional moral-family values. They see the State as a legitimate vehicle to pursue their moral ideals.
I argue, however, that such a belief, most vocalized by the conservative Christian community, is erroneous and misguided on several levels.
First, Christian conservatives fail to realize that individual freedom is the very sine qua non of the moral virtue they profess to advocate. When the State acts on behalf of any cause whatsoever, it will have to apply the use of physical force due to its very nature. The liberal philosopher Ludwig von Mises explained, “The state is essentially an apparatus of compulsion and coercion. The characteristic feature of its activities is to compel people through the application or the threat of force to behave otherwise than they would like to behave.” 377A therefore involves, at the very least, the threat of physical force over homosexual individuals in Singapore even though it is not actively enforced. Just because I don’t pull the trigger cannot excuse my pointing a gun on you.
Why should Christian conservatives call for legislation that essentially calls for violence against an otherwise peaceful act between consenting adults? This is the moral question that they must give a proper response to. Their concerns about the health of Singapore’s social fabric and the family unit are secondary to the question of justice. Is it just for a society to criminalize an activity that is consensual and peaceful?
Christian conservatives should realize that if individuals are not left free to make choices of their own (including sinful ones), moral virtue is impossible. The famous economist Friedrich Hayek once said, “Morality can only exist in the sphere in which an individual is free to decide for himself and is called upon voluntarily to sacrifice personal advantage to the observance of a moral rule. Outside the sphere of individual responsibility there is neither goodness nor badness, neither opportunity for moral merit nor the chance of proving one’s conviction by sacrificing one’s desires to what one thinks right. Only where we ourselves are responsible for our own interests and are free to sacrifice them has our decision moral value. Those who are MADE to do a good thing have no title to praise.” We can be free and moral, free and immoral, but if we’re not free, we can be neither virtuous nor sinful.
There is simply no good reason why someone who holds a conservative brand of personal ethics cannot and should not also accept the philosophy of liberalism, which calls for individuals to be free to act so long as he respects the equal rights of others to do likewise. In fact, since freedom is essential for any moral agency, Christian conservatives are behooved to accept the liberal idea of equal freedom for all. The same freedom they desire to carry out their religious outreach is the very same freedom that all sexual minorities also deserve. In the spirit of rational consistency, it is simply impossible for them to deny this.
Christianity has been misunderstood, as to favor only more interventionism and regulation in the private lives of individuals. People like Pastor Khong perpetuate such an impression. Such a brand of busy-body politics did not characterize the early Protestants in Christian Europe. In fact, Christianity and Liberalism became a potent alliance in the fight for religious liberty in an atmosphere of stifling statism. Considered by many the father of classical liberalism, the philosopher John Locke argued that it was God himself who endowed individuals with natural rights of life, liberty and property. Such Christian-liberal ideas animated the early American revolutionaries, and are expressed elegantly in the Jeffersonian Declaration of Independence.
Christians might insist that adherence to scripture must take precedence over any such abstract political philosophies. And I agree. Being a Christian myself, I am intimately familiar with the Great Commission in Matthew 28, which calls Christians to preach the teachings of Christ to the world. But what are his teachings? It is simply, the gospel message of justification by faith, of the free forgiveness of sins for anyone who places his faith in what Christ has done. Jesus did not come to give more laws, more regulation and advocate more statist control, he came to save sinners by his grace. Being Christian, I do acknowledge that the world needs to hear the Gospel, which is simply that Christ came to be sin for us, even though he knew no sin. As such, sinners like all of us may be the very righteousness of God.
Tragically though, Christians prefer today to be political activists than Jesus-centered evangelists. They place more confidence in government laws than the transforming power of the Gospel. Do they not realize that the Law cannot save? After all, it is THE GOSPEL which is THE power of God unto salvation. (Rom 1:16).
It is not just a matter of having misplaced confidence in the State. The conservative activism of Christians today is only turning away the ordinary man on the street. How will a hurting sinner know about what Christians are for, if they only know about what Christians are against? Christians should remember that the Church is not a place to hold up politics or moral causes, but only the Gospel of Christ.
Bryan Cheang
TRS Contributor