Monday, February 27, 2006

My life to live not yours

Well well, the furore over the internet of this girl who filmed herself having sex with her boyfriend and subsequently had her phone stolen and the clip distributed over the internet thus gaining internet notoriety. Normally I loathe to jump on the bandwagon and comment about such inane stuff, nevertheless I feel strongly enough to write about it here.
First of all, let's establish that it was a personal clip. I'm not interested in what people do in the dark corners of their rooms. I mean as I sit here writing there are millions of people engaging in coitus now so why feel surprised that people out there are getting some?
Maybe it's because of the age of the person involved. Oh c'mon, walk into any army camp you can hear NSFs exchanging stories about their conquests. Don't be a prune. Like it or not your precious sons and daughters are engaging in coitus with you in your ignorant bliss.
I must say that I don't condone premarital sex, but I believe it's the right of an individual to mess up their own lives in their own self destructive way. I don't intend to take any moral high ground or anything like that, I just believe if your actions don't affect me directly you are very welcome to press the self destruct in your life. So people please, unless you're her parents and have a duty to tell her what to do, just lay off, and maybe you would like to find out what junior has been doing at that friend's house other than that very hard to complete "project".
Besides, again this is a sign we have yet to progress as a nation. Instead of talking about the death of a national icon, budget 2006 or basically something more important, we're engaging in idle chatter about a girl's personal life.
However, what I REALLY took offence to was that a newspaper interviewed a religious leader who offered his views about the incident. Granted, some people may think he is an authority on the degradation of teenage moral values, but lest I forgot, aren't we a secular society? By only interviewing him and no other religious leaders is the newspaper trying to say that the religion he supports is the de facto religion in singapore? And what the religious leader said could be interpreted as "if the girl had been a member of his religion she wouldn't have done such a thing" I felt such a comment was unnecessary. The incident has already happened, and it just feels like a thinly veiled attempt at trying to promote this religion above others. Singapore is a secular society, hell you're not even allowed to play worship songs in camp, so why this blatant promoting of one religion above the others? Note I'm no bigot but friends know I have strong beliefs about religion. However, that does not mean I do not respect a person's religion. It's just that I take offence to the blatant promotion by a supposedly secular newspaper. So those ready to hang me or burn me at the stake please stay your murderous hands as I mean no harm.
So, fellow citizens of singapore, please get off your moral high horse. It's a free world, if people want to screw up their lives, unless you're their guardian and thus you shall gain embarrassment by proxy thus would be obliged to stop their self destruction, just let those who wish to destroy their lives go ahead. Don't get a messianic complex and think you can save everyone. Not everyone may want to be saved.

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