The liberal case for: rejecting the campaign to boycott DBS

Because I'm an equal opportunity insulter of stupid ideas, whether they originate from the left or right.

It was easy to heckle at FOTF Singapore's delicate dance with its chapterhouse in the US. If you thought the doubleminded doubletalk from FOTF Singapore was bad enough, the gay activists are treading an equally fine line on the issue of casus belli. Self-serving is the only word that is appropriate to describe their current actions.

Consider: What on earth did FOTF Singapore do to enrage the activists into a boycott of DBS?

As far as we know, DBS has set aside a percentage of its Christmas promotion to send money to FOTF Singapore. That may have been sufficient for gay overlord Alex Au and his group of Young Turks on facebook, but for any liberal, this cuts no ice.

Consider what would be an iron-clad justification for a boycott. Perhaps FOTF Singapore has waged open war on homosexuals, liberals, and women seeking abortion for as long as it existed?

But then, the open, eternal war was that of the chapterhouse in America. The last time FOTF Singapore made public statement on homosexuality was in 2003. Its stupidity justifiably attracted criticism, derision, and jokes. As a proud reality-based liberal, I challenge gay activists to show evidence that the organisation has not ceased in its war against them in public since then.

Perhaps FOTF Singapore, in paying daily columns in Today newspaper written by its chapterhouse in the US, is guilty of spreading virulent hatred against liberals, gays and women seeking abortion? Well, I challenge gay activists to furnish actual instances and quotes where Today printed a hate article by James Dobson and chapterhouse FOTF. They will come up with nothing.

Everywhere you look, there is no reality-based, evidence-rooted just cause for the boycott. And having a just cause is that important, because presumably you're fighting for the moral higher ground - and not engaging in an intimidation contest to see who can marshal the loudest proxies to sink the opponents' share of public opinion.

Was this the right project to scuttle?

So, what did FOTF Singapore do to drive our beloved gay activists into shrill unholy madness?

It turns out that DBS, the Far East Organisation, and even the paleo-Christian (i.e. the only protestants here who have a death-feud with the evangelicals, non-denominations, and political Christians) Tangs (who used to open after noon on Sundays because it wanted to give its Christian staff time for church) made the decision to support FOTF Singapore for the building of a learning centre for children with learning disabilities.

Alex Au and his trigger-happy radicalised young turks on facebook should consider themselves very, very lucky to have gotten away with their stupidity. Only because FOTF Singapore is even more stupid than them, and missed out on a huge publicity coup to plaster photographs of the beneficiaries of the learning-disabled children, and cry out Alex Au and the gay activists hate Christmas, hate the family, and hate the learning centre for learning-disabled children.

So here's an educational lesson for Alex Au and his gay facebook movement: In the reality based world, banks and rich organisations work vet the charities by vetting the charity projects they sponsor. In other words, DBS, Far East Organisation, and Tangs are not idiots - of course they did specify what type of projects they would allow FOTF to use their money for.

Alex Au and his gay facebook movement, on the other hand, are the real idiots in this saga, for failing to do their homework on how charity funding works, or even to ask very nicely where the money would be spent.

I hope that liberals in Singapore have not been so silly as to get recruited as convenient proxies for the gay agenda in what is clearly an animalistic, to the death fight with FOTF Singapore and its FOTF chapterhouse. Liberalism would have died an ugly death here, if Au and his ill-informed minions led a larger group of even less informed liberal sympathisers to wage war on DBS.

Just causes and just desserts

No matter how much or little we buy into FOTF Singapore's plausible deniability, there was no just cause for the boycott action - if the funding for a school for the learning-disabled isn't clear or embarrassing enough to Alex Au's horde.

As questionable as FOTF Singapore fundamentally is, this special school would be the least tainted of its social projects to date. It has been rewarded with such a reaction from the gay movement.

As liberals, we are not interested in an eternal war with conservatives. On the contrary, we would applaud whatever progressive projects they come up with, and support these projects in the hope that it encourages conservatives to focus MORE on progressive issues in the future instead of culture war issues.

The boycott campaign by the gay activists only serves to make such change and moderation impossible. Moreover, their actions can only encourage their opponents to stage reprisals in the same vein: namely, scuttling any positive social projects (HIV awareness, testing, drug subsidies, anyone?) by objecting to the mere presence of the gay activists and gay organisations involved in these projects.

Once again, as before, I call for the seppuku of Alex Au and his gay activist allies, and their exile from activism of ANY KIND. They're a bunch of clowns who endanger the gay movement and discredit liberalism in Singapore.