Changing times

re: "Rainbow of hope loses its lustre" (BP, April 17, 2022) 

Dear editor,

As reported in "Rainbow of hope loses its lustre", Thailand's LGBTQ has grounds both for pride in progress made and disappointment that much progress remains to be achieved.

The experience of Thailand's LGBTQ citizens, who ask only to be accorded equal legal rights to other Thai citizens, mirrors in several aspects the recent history of Gay Lesbian rights movements in Western liberal democracies. There too, for example in my own country, religious bigotry, and it never was anything but bind prejudice, was the major force spewing toxic hatred and intolerance into longstanding social mores. When I was in primary and high school 50 and 60 years ago, being homosexual was right up their with murder in the evils that one could be guilty of. It was an abomination too evil to name. That was the atmosphere I grew up in. That was the social atmosphere created by the toxic faith-based ideology of religions falsely claiming to value love, peace and acceptance. 

But through the efforts of courageous Gay men and Lesbian women who peacefully but firmly protested for justice, who calmly presented reasoned arguments showing the grave moral defects in prevailing social mores inherited from our ancestors in thrall to faith-based certainties that always were false and morally wrong, the peoples of Australia, the US, the UK and other nations came to see that the religiously conservative opposition to Gays, Lesbians, and then Bisexuals, Transsexuals, Queers and others, had not a single supporting reason of any worth, save their faith. And faith, being precisely a belief held more or less desperately in the total absence of any evidence or supporting reason, is no reason at all. If all a position on any issue has is faith, it has literally nothing at all reasonable in its favour.

Change through pressure backed by reason and example can work miracles. When in school and terrified that someone might guess my worst secret, I could not imagine that only 50 years later, Australia would legalize same-sex marriage, despite the inevitable opposition of the religious groups, whose ideology of unquestionable infallibility, moral certainty, secrecy and other fake claims also actively enabled systemic child sexual abuse and other evils to flourish for centuries. In 2017, more than 60% of Australians voted in favour of legalizing same-sex marriage. However, even without that majority support, reduced mainly by lingering faith in religions preaching intolerance and hate to fuel prejudice, it was the right, the just thing to do. In fact, even without, or actually against, majority support, democratic principle, as Thailand's youth protestors understand, requires that same-sex couple have exactly the same marriage rights as mixed-sex couples. 

Offering a useful contrast to the same just end, the US experience of overcoming traditional faith-based bigotry opposing equal legal recognition for committed, loving same-sex relationships came through the US Supreme Court opinion in favour of the petition from a gay man denied the right to legal marriage by state law and lower courts in the United States. In 2015, the 5-4 ruling in Obergefell v. Hodges made same-sex marriage legal throughout the United States in accord with the provisions of the United States Constitution. Thailand's Constitutional Court, sadly, was unable to similarly move Thailand forward to better social mores and legal practice because of a flawed Thai constitution that the court is obliged to follow. However, despite the expected opposition from religiously inspired conservatives and the rejection for no just reason of the Marriage Equality Bill, proposed by the Move Forward Party, there is cause for optimism.

It would appear that younger, better educated Thais able to think and critically assess the issues understand that traditional conservative arguments based on pure faith are no reasons at all for or against any law, and that traditional social mores are as likely to be as gravely unjust as they are to be just. The desperate efforts by conservatives using anti-democratic law to stifle free, open discussion of nationally important Thai issues is proof that those so censoring have no sound reasons to continue inflicting their historical prejudices on the Thai people. 

Those with good reasons for holding any position do not rely for support either on faith or the suppression of open discussion. 

 Felix Qui

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The above letter to the editor is the text as submitted by Felix Qui to the Bangkok Post.

The text as edited was published in PostBag on April 19, 2022, under the title "Changing times" at https://www.bangkokpost.com/opinion/postbag/2296810/kangaroo-court-