The way some people behave will always be seen as immoral by some others, whether justified or not. Values are highly personal and sometimes blindly inherited — a person may always believe that homosexuality is wrong because it is what he or she has always been told.

The person may not even have met anyone who is gay or even wondered what makes it so immoral besides the fact that the very idea makes the believer personally uncomfortable (they are usually the same people who equate homosexuality with sex, nothing more).

While I realise that it is easier for us to have someone to demonise than to question our own values ('I may be siphoning millions from my company, paying off government officials, sexually harassing my secretary and beating my wife but at least I'm not a homosexual!'), but for our own good we need to differentiate between behaviour that hurts us and behaviour that doesn't.

Many women I know have had their bags snatched at least once. One of them was in her ninth-month pregnancy when she was brutally knocked to the ground by the snatchers. Another was thrown against a building so hard she had to have reconstructive surgery to repair the broken bones in her face.

Yet another was a widow whose husband had just died and who was carrying his final love letters in her purse. When these women made police reports, the police responded in a bored and unhelpful manner. "If we find your purse, we'll call you", they said. No comforting words, and guess how many of them received that call?

There are more robberies, more shootings, more problems within the police department including corruption and the rape of inmates, yet major police news this week was that they stormed a beauty contest and arrested the contestants. That the contestants were transvestites is immaterial.

It is time the police started picking on someone their own size, someone who actually threatens the lives, safety and well-being of the people who live here. Transvestites do none of those. Robbers, rapists and murderers do all.

So do corrupt officials. Prime Minister Dr Mahathir Mohamad has said that there is no place for gays and lesbians in office. I wish he would speak out just as strongly against people who take bribes in exchange for letting criminals go free, or profiteering developers build unsafe structures, or politicians who look the other way when people die at the hands of the very police who are supposed to protect them.

Please, by all means, persecute Puteri Umno chief Azalina Othman Said if she has been using public funds for private use, because that hurts us. If she has a lover, male or female, married or unmarried, it is none of our business.