Speaking of the Majority
When did we agree to equate "society" with the "majority" within it?
Even on the side of the progressives of this whole thing I've seen a distressing inheritance of the opponent's logic: that the "majority" in a society have a license to speak on its behalf, and that debate should only be confined to what one thinks this silent majority consists of (liberals or conservatives).
I'm sorry but even if one could speak of a majority of Germans under Hitler having supported the extermination of the Jews, the might of the majority does not at all stand in for unequivocal moral authority. I'm being quite crass about this but only because I think the rhetoric of the "majority" always precedes only the most myopic, all-consuming forms of violence, ones that end up dissolving society itself. A society founded on persecution is one doomed to eviscerate itself in its quest for purity and homogeneity. Only the monad remains at the end of that road.
So what if the majority of Singaporeans are conservative, homophobic fundies? Society is constituted by differences (real or imagined) and its spirit resides in the struggles of its weakest to find empathy and legitimacy amongst the rest.