There has been just so much debate over this year’s Pink Dot event in Singapore. To the unacquainted, Pink Dot is a annual, non-profit and local movement kicked into driving gear in 2009 with the aim to celebrate and support the lesbian, gay, bisexual and transexual (LGBT) community in Singapore.

But Pink Dot is more than just a “gay rally”. It is a distillation of the idea of those in Singapore who wanted to raise awareness of the LGBT community whose role in the local social, economical and political fabric is inalienable yet remaining a magnet of controversy and discrimination; and that the group should not be silenced and muted simply because of the voices of a vocal group of anti-LGBT lobbyists — ranging from parents who send their kids to dubious, unscientific “gay therapy” programs to pastors that preach hate and discrimination (Lawrence Khong is just one of the many, but definitely the most vocal of all).

The movement itself is so far-fetched from the typical hustle-and-bustle metropolitan lifestyle of the island country whose national hobby is half-jokingly called shopping, that it has received increasing magnitude of opposition and retaliation from various faith groups, this year being one of the most prominent ever—so much so that added security measures and presence personnel of such were required. In a rare show of ironic unity, the local Islamic and Christian communities banded together in support of the Wear White campaign.

If your religion is able to get along with another on the basis of shared disdain for a trait that is mostly genetically-predisposed (in layman’s term, something that we don’t really have control of), it speaks volume of being on a new level of douche-baggery.

I did not choose to be gay—it is not a lifestyle choice. I was born gay, and I simply knew it. It is hard to believe some heterosexual telling you that my sexual preferences are a choice instead of being a product of simple genetics and inheritance—it’s akin of a man trying to convince an expectant mother that childbirth is easy as peanuts. Not only is it woefully offensive, you’re also voicing an opinion that you personally have no experience in, let alone walking in that very same shoe you’re preaching of.

You’d ask how and when I knew that I liked guys—and that begs the very same reciprocal: when do you know you’re straight? I was attracted to male figures when I was a kid, but it wasn’t until my teenage years that I realized the very platonic attraction turned sexual.

If (and big if) being LGBT is a lifestyle choice, I would have definitely thought twice before diving in head-first—with brutal honesty, all that discrimination, hate, name-calling and stereotyping happening towards LGBT people, especially young adults and teenagers, makes choosing to be gay a very irrational choice, don’t you reckon?

It wasn’t my intention to start a whole rhetorical tirade on LGBT in Singapore. The motivation behind this article was not for Pink Dot per se—it has always received my upmost emotional and mental support (although for various reasons I have never managed to physically attend one myself). After living for close to ten years in Singapore, I know exactly how hard it is for many to be gay, in a largely conservative society that was moulded under the burden of heavy religious undertones.

It was an article written by Marc, titled Wear Pink or Wear White, which I encountered on my Facebook feed at four on a Saturday morning—on why am I up that early on a weekend, I’ll leave that for another story. Very eloquently written, and juggled with great flair and logic about the definition of “judgment”, and how we should not judge the LGBT community. However, if you would inspect his closing comments with a magnifying glass (emphasis are my own):

In this post, I’ve focused on the LGBT issue as a lifestyle choice, yet this thinking is quickly diminishing and more and more people believe that it’s something you’re born with. Even if that is true, I still stand by my decision that I do not agree with the issue. And let me just quickly explain why. We are all born with the tendency to do wrong. We never have to teach a young child how to do wrong, it comes naturally. Yet, are we going to say that just because it’s natural and something I’m born with, that it’s alright and acceptable? If I’m born with the tendency to torture animals, is it then acceptable? If I’m born with the tendency to rape others or steal things, can I stand behind my nature and justify my actions?

Now, that is some flawed logic that requires some dissection. While I appreciate Marc for not explicitly and vocally hating the LGBT community, his conflation of a natural, genetic predisposition (such as homosexuality, as per the gay uncle hypothesis) with moral righteousness worries me. By the same argument, does it mean that there is an inherent classification system for the rightness (or a wrongness) to all genetically-inherited traits, be it eye colour, height (which is malleable to environment and diet, but also has a strong and very complicated genetic component), congenital diseases, biological sex, earlobe shape or blood group systems (ABO blood type and RH blood groups being the most prominent)?

On the other hand, the tendency to torture, rape and theft, as cited by Marcus, are physical manifestations of psychopathy. Psychopathy is known to have both a genetic and environmental components. While the exact contribution of each component is unsure, the environment that these people were raised in, and stimuli they were exposed to, plays a crucial role in said socially-undesirable and illegal behaviours.

Meanwhile, there is virtually no harm an LGBT person can do to the general populace. Seeing two members of the same sex holding hands does not make an impressionable child gay—it is akin to saying watching too much Soul Train made one African-American (Wanda Sykes reference, see end of article), or that eating sufficient amount of rødgrød med fløde will eventually turn me Danish.

Recognizing LGBT rights does not entail an automatic spiral of decaying and erosion of rights heterosexual couples enjoy today, nor does it “normalize homosexuality” because the truth is that any other sexuality other than heterosexuality has always been part of the diversity spectrum since time immemorial.

However, choosing to think that homosexuality is wrong, but still accepting it as something that cannot be changed—and putting it in an article with a thinly-veiled intention to point out the morality, or lack thereof, behind being gay—now that is a lifestyle choice.

You are assigning a morality classification to something that is set in my genetic code—that, in its own credit, is much more of a choice than me being born gay.

There is only one agenda that we are pushing for—the recognition of a minority in the human sexuality spectrum. How this movement can be spun into arguments for self-serving reasons is totally beyond me.

Acceptance of LGBT has nothing to do with a Western influence, nor it is a liberal agenda as many people would very rashly brand it so. It is simply the advancement of a universal human trait (which ironically many lack)—the capability to empathise. We, humanity as a collective, have to understand that we are so infinitely diverse—the combination of 20,000 genes spread over 23 chromosomes (multiply that twice because we get one copy from each parent), totalling over 3.2 gigabases, and the the biological mechanisms in place to retain and expand genetic diversity, means that we have a mind-boggling, unfathomable degree of genetic diversity based on the possible combinations of inheritance from our parents.

And yet we are all located on this one pale dot captured by a lone pixel on a Voyager 1 space probe camera 6 billion kilometers away. Do we really want humanity to be remembered as the species who hated itself on the basis of genetic diversity? Think twice.

Be glad that you don’t need a heterosexual equivalent of Pride, or in a Singaporean context, Pink Dot. Nor do you need a religious equivalent of it, too. That is because you’re all within your legal rights to have a religion, and to be a natural-born heterosexual.

However, for members of the LGBT community in Singapore (and many other localities across the world), acceptance and recognition of their rights are a far-fetched dream. On a daily basis we struggle against adversity due to unjustified and irrationality-driven discrimination and bullying. LGBT teens suffer the highest attempted suicide rates, at 30–40%, in all age groups. A study conducted in 2010 in the United States revealed that, in a sample population recruited online or community-based groups, that of LGBT teens attending an educational institution, 80% were verbally harassed, 40% physically so, and 20% a victim of a physical assault.

But we are going to work towards that, no matter what. There is no equality for all until this is set right.

I don’t like ending my articles with a sombre, sad-tone, though — so I shall end it with a skit by renowned comedian Wanda Sykes (who identifies herself as a lesbian, for the uninitiated). Over and out.