>Until recently it was illegal to be gay in Singapore.
Not that long ago it was in many parts of the west too. Could get you fired from work, There were still gays in both places of course, both closeted and people everybody knew they were gay.
Hell, up until the 60s there was seggregation of blacks and whites.
> I sort of agree, but both should occur. Letting transgressions slide because economic progress is made should not occur.
That assumes that these things are uncorrelated, and I don’t think you can make that assumption without proof. For example, Singapore is a multi-ethnic, multi-religious society with a delicate balance between Chinese (Confucian), Malays (Muslim), and Indians (Hindu). This is a mix that in many countries could devolve into perpetual ethnic conflict. Indeed, Singapore separated from Malaysia due to conflict between the Chinese and the Malay.
Part of that grand bargain is that the culture of government is Anglo and Confucian, but the government otherwise avoids intruding on the culture of the other two groups. Homosexuality is simply not accepted in Islam and among Indians. So a push to legalize it would be seen as an attack by westernized English-speaking Chinese upon the two other cultural groups.
Lee Kuan Yew was, in fact, extremely westernized (he spoke English as his first language), and opposed the law against homosexuality. But he was not about to upset social stability and unity in the country over that issue: https://www.reuters.com/article/us-singapore-homosexuality-i...
In America, we take social stability for granted. Imposing social change without broad public consensus creates social strife and more than a little dysfunction even in America. In a developing country, such conflict could be fatal. The calculus of individual welfare versus collective welfare is simply different in a developing country. Singapore’s infant mortality dropped from 35 per 1,000 to 2.5 per 1,000 from 1960 to 2000. Anything that sets back economic development, no matter how well intentioned the goal, means literally tens of thousands of dead children. That’s the cold hard reality people in wealthy countries don’t have to deal with.
Shallow dismissal. Singapore discriminates against LGBTQ couples as a matter of policy. Just because it doesn't affect you doesn't mean it's an anecdote.
> Frankly I'm not even sure the statement about minority groups is true anymore
I think gay people in most of the world are still legally persecuted by their states. At least in a number of countries, the penalties for being homosexual or engaging in homosexual activities range from imprisonment to execution.
> If anything this used to be much more common before the era of codes of conduct, when people were, for example, routinely fired when it was discovered that they were gay.
> Introduction of democracy and women’s rights in Europe are good examples.
Which is why I said “religious” and “sexual preference”.
Jews were widely discriminated against even a few years after WW2; Muslims are a current whipping-boy; I’m not sure if Catholic-vs-Protestant is as big a divide in Northern Ireland as it looks from the outside, but it does look big; In the USA, Atheists are almost as disliked as Muslims.
Then there’s sexual preference. You’re fine if you’re gay (finally!), but not so much if you’re into BDSM or have any fetishes more complicated than underwear. Also, I have a friend whose sexuality was previously legal, but which was outlawed in half of Europe and half of the USA this century. I invite you to guess what that might be.
> Okay, but there was a time when homosexuality was a crime in the majority of Western countries, and in some places around the world, it still is a crime. What then/there?
One easy place to start-- are the laws are based on kinds of dubious claims that our own social and scientific history has rejected?
And at least in Africa, Western evangelicals have spent a lot of time and effort exporting their same stupid ideas about homosexuality. So our Western approaches should be pretty easy to copy-paste there. :)
Honestly, that speaks for the repressive force of the culture more than the lack of other minorities. A lack of ethnicity can be somewhat explained by a lack of historic migration. Homosexuality is everywhere.
> You have been free to love whoever you want for centuries.
Um, no. It was a criminal act to be gay in the US earlier this century.
> Im a male that loves my father
Oh, I see. You're either practicing illegal love, or you're being purposely obtuse by conflating two different meanings of love.
> Because that's the only distinction I see between me loving my male friends and me being gay.
You hold hands with them? In public? You kiss and cuddle with them? In front of children? Because gay people have been murdered for that in living memory. I guess they just should have avoided touching sexual organs (in private) and everything would have been fine.
I think Don Dunstan did something in 1973, but I've forgotten exactly what. (It's interesting how many authors still omit to mention that Dunstan was bisexual.) The murder of George Duncan, by persons unknown but widely suspected to be wearing blue uniforms, was 1972. That gave Dunstan his excuse.
The job wasn't finished until 1997, by the conventional account. Personally, I'd argue for 2016, when Queensland[1] made it legal to be a gay teenager.
Not that long ago it was in many parts of the west too. Could get you fired from work, There were still gays in both places of course, both closeted and people everybody knew they were gay.
Hell, up until the 60s there was seggregation of blacks and whites.
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