I have been watching with interest the UK situation pertaining to the legalisation of gay rights and think that one can even begin to make predictions about what will happen to Malaysia. Speaking as someone who has good friends who are gay, I wish to state from the outset that I am still undecided about what position to take with regards to what are still a minority of people who feel very deeply that their being gay is something inherent and real.

Nevertheless, I feel that Malaysians of all walks of life should understand that the situation in Western countries with regards to gay rights bear out the fears of this letter-writer in that gay rights activists are today not just fighting for their rights but are also not particularly concerned if their struggle ends up imposing their lifestyle on heterosexuals. Your readers should know that the situation in the UK with regards to gay rights has really gone beyond just legalising gay 'marriage.'

The UK has taken an alarming position with regard to gay rights when it forced all adoption agencies in 2008 (including religious adoption agencies) to comply with a new legislation requiring them to treat without discrimination same sex couples who want to adopt children.

This means that if you are a Catholic adoption agency, you must give equal weightage to the application by a same sex couple who want to adopt the children under your care. (Now let's leave aside the issue of whether the Catholic church still has the moral authority to oversee the welfare of children after the recent pedophile scandals in Western countries.) The point is that under the banner of liberalism, gay rights lobbyists are clearly imposing their lifestyle on communities who posses what is now called orthodox views towards marriage, family and the community.

If you can appreciate that point, then let's go to the larger picture of the kind of society that Western countries are going to become in the not too distant future. They are going to become a society with a very confused 'social structure,' as anthropologists use the term. Most Western (actually 'urban' is a better term) societies are already confused because of several destructive processes that have been at work in their communities for a long time - the break-up of the extended family into nuclear families, the abandonment of the older generation into old folks homes, high divorce rates, teenagers forced into leaving home pre-maturely and the general atomisation of individuals in Western (urban) society.

Let me give you just a simple example of how the promotion of ‘gay-ism’ (which happens often enough now through the entertainment media and other means) is going to make things even more confused and unstable in society, in all urban centres regardless of whether in Western or more traditional Eastern countries. This is what I mean by a ‘confused social structure’.

Here's the situation - I live in Sabah and in this place the extended family (in my case, a Sino-Dusun extended family) is still intact. I had to work late last night and I wanted my young, 28-year old, unmarried sister-in-law to help me with some clerical tasks for which I normally pay her (as she has previously done so in the daytime). Social norms in conservative societies like Sabah dictate that since she is an adult, it is up to her whether she wants to accompany a non-blood relative to a secluded place (my office) at night.

But it just so happened that last night she had another appointment. I was left with no choice but to ask my teenage nephews-in-law for help. One of them agreed and I drove him to my office where he helped me with clerical tasks until 12 midnight, after which I returned him to his parents' (my wife's elder sister's) home.

Now, for argument's sake, let's just say that none of my in-laws' sons were available to help me last night. Would my elder sister-in-law have allowed me to take one of her teenage daughters (my niece-in-law) to work with me in my secluded office until 12 midnight? Very unlikely, even though my elder sister-in-law has known me for more than a decade.

One might append additional factors to this situation such as the issue of building up personal trust or whether the fact that I had already contracted a heterosexual marriage to my elder sister-in-law's sister as the reason why she would trust me with her male child but not with her female child. But the point is that in Asian and African societies (especially in semi- or non-urbanised settings) we generally make decisions of trust and confidence based on male-female gender.

If our social structure is to be further confused by the promotion of gay-ism (by which I foresee many young Malaysians coming to believe that being gay is normal and even typical) such basic interactions as the situation I have outlined above become very confused.

I can already hear your readers saying that even in heterosexual societies, you can never be sure that the man is not a pervert and that he may commit sexual abuse against a person of any gender that he can draw into a secluded place. But this kind of argument makes a mockery of how people in traditional societies have assigned trust and confidence, based on gender, to make decisions of the sort that I have outlined above and they have done it with considerable success.

In rural or semi-urban Malaysia, people continue to make decisions using the male/female gender approach on a daily basis. Add a third gender to this mix (through the active promotion of gayism as something normal or typical) and you have a confused social structure and very unpredictable social relationships on a national scale.

You might say that Malaysian society is already mixed up but you ain't seen nothing yet until you see how the casual promotion of gayism in society is going to change our lives.