LJ is thanked for reminding us in his letter ( Homosexual acts still outlawed in M'sia ) that homosexuality or any such act — although terribly vague or ill-defined — are prohibited and punishable by secular and syariah laws in Malaysia.

I've been acutely aware of these laws since 1998.

If these laws are antiquated — and they are — they're made and enforced by antediluvian minds that are completely out of touch with the modern world and changing values, even in Malaysia.

These laws and their men are simply intolerant of others, who they'd readily claim as 'deviant' for their homosexuality.

Homophobes should understand that homosexuality is not a bad thing. It's not a crime either.

It's clear these laws and their men do not promote the making of compassion in what Prime Minister Dr Mahathir Mohamad has boasted so many times of sponsoring, under his rule, the making of a modern society and a modern economy.

These laws should be repealed.

And if Malaysia, as Mahathir claims, is a democracy, then there ought to be open public debate about all issues and not selected ones.

Sufficient public pressure should be brought to bear on politicians to change laws that repress the basic rights of people and of minorities.

Otherwise, what's the point of voting in plebiscites at all?

My other point, which LJ has missed, is this: these anti-homosexual behaviour laws are being used utterly selectively by politicians like Mahathir to persecute his political challengers and other dissenters to his throne.

It's strange that, with quite a bit of homosexual activity in Malaysia, I've not heard of a single case — not even Anwar Ibrahim's — being heard in a syariah court.

Anwar's was the only case that I know of that was tried by Malaysia's secular laws, in courts that made a complete farce and mockery of the country's judicial system and the so-called independence of judges.

Why have these laws if they are completely up to Mahathir alone to try who he wants, when he wants, on flimsy or cooked-up evidence produced by what one writer to malaysiakini recently called "nefarious liars", with the likes of Ummi Hafilda Ali who, with the approval and support of her political patron Mahathir, has single-handedly destroyed Anwar who had dared to challenge Mahathir?

Yet, curiously, Mahathir claims he is a liberal.

I don't expect we could ever have democratic laws and democratic governance in Malaysia as long as feudal lords like Mahathir and feudalistic parties like Umno remain politically dominant.

Their modus operandi is not to promote free, fair and open public debate among all peoples of Malaysia. Rather, it is to repress any such tendencies and demands for change — by brute force if necessary, meted out by an entrenched surveillance-cum-police state.

Which makes me wonder just where the opposition political parties are, if they exist at all.