COMMENT Many people who oppose homosexuality and who vehemently call homosexuals immoral or their behavior sinful, appear to be religious. Their common justification for their condemnation is always a religious one, for they can only appeal to their sacred texts.

As a Malaysian citizen, I would like to remind my Christian brothers and sisters, as well as my Muslim siblings, that this textual appeal to condemning homosexuals is highly problematic. Malaysia is a secular state under which no religion is to become an orthodoxy created or endorsed by the state, that may undercut any citizen's claim to equal rights or to be imposed on non-believers.

NONE Before engaging in this debate, one must decide whether or not homosexuality is a religious issue. If it is, then one must keep what one believes to oneself instead of imposing it on others or calling others who do not share what one believes, immoral.

If it is not a religious issue, or if it is a moral issue, as many religious people claim it to be, then one should not argue one's case by appealing to her or his religious text.

This is a simple truth that fortunately many people, including Christians, understand. It is why Christians in this country do not for example seek to enforce the prohibition against idol worship as public law.

No one in Malaysia, to my knowledge, has condemned fortune tellers publicly, has sought to criminalise them, or has supported laws making fortune-telling illegal, even though it is clearly and strongly denounced in the Bible; nor do Christians in Malaysia condemn men who have long hair, although it is explicitly prohibited in '1 Corinthians 11:14' of the Bible, that declares men having long hair to be "against the nature."

Neither do they condemn all women who refuse to cover their hair, that is unequivocally taught in '1 Corinthians 11:6'. I believe that if any non-Christian in our country were to call meat-eaters or pork-eaters immoral or unethical, and were to seek to criminalise them merely by appealing to their own religious texts, many Christians would stand up and rightly refute their nonsensical ideas.

Outdated laws

Ironically and disappointingly, however, many Christians somehow have forgotten that they should not do to others what they would not want others to do to them.

Many have appealed to the Bible to call homosexuals or their behaviour immoral, and condemn them publicly, as if this were a moral issue. There are also some Christian have tried to focus on other arguments based on stereotypical views of homosexuals that are biased, or cannot be logically consistent.

For instance, some argue on procreation saying that homosexuality is wrong because homosexuals cannot not procreate; and yet they do not condemn everyone else who does not procreate for whatever reason.

In a secular country, religious causes should have no bearing on what the state ought to say. We cannot enforce our religious prohibitions on non-believers or enforce them as public laws. Sadly, and unfortunately, Malaysia still retains the outdated laws that prohibit ‘unnatural sex’ that we inherited from our coloniser, one that ironically the colonial master has long since repealed.

anwar sodomy case newspaper 040210 ‘Crimes against nature’ or ‘unnatural sex’ is so vague in its normative regime that it has rendered fellatio, oral sex and anal sex as criminal acts (regardless of sexuality). In the past, some had extended the law to include masturbation.

These laws inherited from the coloniser are Bible-based, or to be more specific, are based on the coloniser's interpretation of the Bible. Even English law has retracted these prohibitions. Is Malaysia a Christian country?

If Christians choose to believe that homosexuality is a sin, they are entitled to believe so. But, they do not have the right to call every homosexual, Christian or non-Christian, immoral. The most that a Christian can do is to condemn gay Christians. They ought and must not condemn homosexuality per se publicly. By doing so, their God and their religion would appear to practising double standards, and is therefore unreasonable.

Consistent with science

Some have accused me for imposing my religious beliefs on others since I say that homosexuality is not a sin or a mental illness, and, in their judgment, have argued against myself.

This accusation is outlandish at best. It is not a religious belief to assert that homosexuality is a sexual orientation that is as normal as heterosexuality, but merely a simple fact. Unless one can demonstrate what is objectively harmful with homosexuality or argue against it beyond reasonable doubt, one must hold that homosexuality is not a problem. This is not based on religious belief, but on fact.

So, how could anyone accuse me of imposing my religious beliefs on anyone?

As an ordained Christian pastor, sometimes I do argue in favour of homosexuality from the biblical perspective. This is because I follow St Augustine's principle of accommodation - that both the Catholic and Protestant churches have embraced - that a scriptural text should be reinterpreted if it clashes with science.

What I have been doing is nothing new. It is my belief that the Bible does not condemn homosexuality and neither should the Church. My theology of sexuality is based on the liberating love of God and on scientific facts, that do not see homosexuality as a problem or a form of illness.

One may disagree with my interpretations of the Bible and choose to believe in an unreasonable God, but the facts are indisputable, until factual evidence demonstrates otherwise.

REV O YOUNG is an ordained Christian minister at MCC New York. He holds two masters degrees in both sociology and theology. Currently he lives in New York city and teaches sociology at St. Peter's College. He has published 20 books on sociology, theology and sexuality. He is also a columnist for Sin Chew Daily . He is currently finishing his doctoral degrees in sociology and theology.