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Abstracts of essays; news; announcements; short takes.
About Me
- Yawning Bread Sampler
- This blog carries summary abstracts of Yawning Bread essays, with space for comments.
Here too are other tidbits that are too short for the main Yawning Bread site.
To email me, go to the main site.
Blog Archive
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2008
(150)
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July
(10)
- Those other ones affected by homosexuality
- Escalator and other paralyses
- Of airports, nudity and an insult to men
- Singapore's religious rightwing trains its sights ...
- Stolen star shines an unflattering light
- Does the Attorney-General know what's in the law b...
- Where's the line between serving the state and ser...
- Sodomy, corruption and Malaysia's Penal Code
- Regulate, not ban, the sale of human organs
- Thursday morning at the Novotel
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July
(10)
Posts
5 comments:
Why do you keep wasting time writing frivolous stuff like this?
People come to Yawning Bread for two things: (1) intelligent, well-argued writings about the PAP's policies failures; (2) balanced, well-informed articles about gay rights.
Give your readers what they want.
To anon at 06 July, 2008 09:58: "Why do you keep wasting time writing frivolous stuff like this?... Give your readers what they want".
This is Yawning Bread's site, he can write whatever he wishes. You could be more polite about giving your feedback (e.g. "Please can we have more of articles on x, y, z") instead of demanding it as a right.
To YB,
Thanks for the meta-thinking on the value of symbolism.
Reminds me of "Morality: 2012" by social and cultural psychologist Jonathan Haidt.
http://www.newyorker.com/online/video/conference/2007/haidt
Actually I agree with you about extremist-Christians in Singapore. When they knock on my door and become arrogantly pushy about their faith, I occasionally use quotes from the bible to mock their own lack of understanding of it. It surprises me how often these evangelist were ignorant of the details in the bible. Most times though, I'll try to close 1 or both eyes and let them be.
I'm a heterosexual, yet I support the homosexual's push for equal access to "symbolic" values of marriage because IMHO the value of equality overrides the "exclusive right" of the in-group's ownership to the symbolism of marriage.
I have no problem with Alex changing the subject now and then, but you could have made your article more directly relevant to your audience; while you have the "right" to write about any topic of your choice, there is the issue of "business", of keeping "customers" happy - and customers are always right!!
for example the issue of tudon took a serious turn just a few years ago, then subsided; the causes of the rise and drop were not all explicit: if it matters so much to those parents that their daughters should wear it to school, why did the issue not recur in subsequent years? since you wonder about the possibility of other people wearing the skullcap for non-religious reasons, what if that occurs with the tudon?
I opine that marriage is but a failed social institution given the divorce rate, extra-marital affairs, and such.
The only reason why I may want to get married is because of the social and legal rights that come with it.
It doesn't even matter if people don't see it as a marriage as long as we are awarded the same social and legal rights as a couple. A marriage is only symbolic anyway. A rose by any other name will smell as sweet.
Your article reminded me of Irwin Cotler, a former Canadian Justice Minister, who failed many years to help Jews and Muslims find common space. But it was when he pushed for the legalisation of gay marriages, that he succeeded in uniting both Muslims and Jews...!
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