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We’re only hardliners on porn, LGBT – Kornelius Purba

March 01, 2016

“If someone is gay and he searches for the Lord and has good will, who am I to judge?” Pope Francis responded when a journalist asked him about gay priests in the Catholic Church in 2013.

His statement was a revolutionary change of position compared with his predecessor Pope Benedict XVI, who was very much opposed to prelates with this sexual orientation, even though the church was not lacking in such men.

Don’t worry, I won’t preach about religious teachings here. This is not just about wrong or right. This is just the reality of life. For you perhaps such an orientation should be condemned because it is totally unacceptable by universally acceptable norms. Or perhaps you are more tolerant of the lesbian, gay, bisexual and transgender (LGBT) community – because it is simply an undeniable fact of life.

Regardless of your position on this issue, why don’t you try to see it from another side?

Personally, I always stick to my own “It could happen to you or your family” credo in regard to the LGBT issue. “Never make fun of transgender people,” I always told my three kids. The arguments are not theological at all, but rather “what if one day your own children faced the same orientation and difficulty?”

As a father or mother, it is natural to expect your son or daughter to introduce you to their girlfriend or boyfriend, respectively. We expect them to be heterosexual, right? But what if your beloved son or daughter brought home a same-sex partner? Would you kick them out of your house and declare they were no longer your child? Or, would you hug them no matter how painful the fact for you?

I still vividly remember when my two sons talked about their gay friends many years ago. Of how their parents were deeply saddened by the situation because their neighbours were gossiping about them.

My wife said she fully understood the parents’ situation. It was an embarrassment. No mother wants to confront such a situation.

“We would continue to love you as much as we do now even if you were gay,” my wife and I told our sons one day. They laughed. Perhaps they were still too young to understand it at that time.

We can easily condemn or make fun of LGBT people. There are so many reasons and excuses to force them to “repent” and return to the “right path”. Perhaps you have never realized that your children, nephew, niece, grandchildren, your brother and sister are trying to hide their true identity because the social punishment is too severe for them to bear.

What would you say if your beloved boy came to you and tearfully confessed: “Dad I am gay”? Or your daughter whispers to you, “Mom, I am a lesbian”? Perhaps it would be a kind of doomsday for you. You have the right to declare your position to them. But have you ever imagined that actually they don’t want to be like that? Perhaps parents also need to look at the mirror and ask ourselves: “Am I to blame for my kid’s misery?”

These days the nation is preoccupied with moral issues such as pornography and the LGBT community. There is an overwhelming consensus that Indonesia is in a state emergency with these two social “diseases”. We are at war against them because our nation does not want the repetition of “Sodom and Gomorrah” because of our sins.

The Indonesian Broadcasting Commission (KPI) recently issued stern instructions for TV stations to stop airing any sinful scenes. In compliance with the warning, when  a TV station  broadcast the Puteri Indonesia beauty pageant, it pixilated contestants wearing the traditional kebaya costume.

Whether we realize it or not, we have made the LGBT and pornography issues our common enemies. In social media, like Facebook and Twitter, calls for a total war against the two phenomena are steadily rising. As if having eliminated the LGBT community and pornography from Indonesia, we will all go to heaven. We pretend not to know that we actually face a much more devastating threat.

Again, I have no intention of arguing one way or the other, I just wonder why we are so indifferent, if not extremely permissive and ignorant, about a much more devastating danger – rampant corruption.

We are consistently on the list of most corrupt nations in the world. Don’t you agree that  graft is more deadly than LGBT people and pornography? Corruption is a crime against humanity and the perpetrators deserve the most severe punishment from our courts.

All major political parties – excluding the Gerindra Party and the Democratic Party – have united to emasculate the highly trusted Corruption Eradication Commission (KPK). The parties represent mega corruptors who feel uncomfortable with the existence of the much-feared anti-graft agency. The National Police and the Attorney-General’s Office are much softer on corruption. Even the government, or at least influential members of the Cabinet, is very willing to weaken the KPK.

We get very noisy about pornography, prostitution, adultery, the LGBT community and petty crimes such as gambling. But why are we so very quiet on corruption or gross human rights violations? To be honest, I don’t know how to answer this question.

Just try to guess: Perhaps, because many Indonesians share my “it could happen to you” belief! – The Jakarta Post, March 1, 2016.

*Kornelius Purba is the senior managing editor of The Jakarta Post.

* This is the personal opinion of the writer or publication and does not necessarily represent the views of The Malaysian Insider.