Friends Of STAR

Three events caught my attention this week. A court action filed by Seksualiti Merdeka for a judicial review against the ban of their sexuality rights festival, Anwar acquittal of his sodomy case and later on his interview on BBC in which he termed the present law on homosexuality as archaic have raised the gay issue back to the fore again. The highly-controversial gay reunion between Ariff Alfian Rosli and his Irish partner by the name of Jonathan has almost died down but the three new events mentioned earlier will sooner or later resurrect interest on the case.

Not long ago I received an email from an unidentified reader. It was a simple email, a bit lengthy but with an explosive content. At that particular time no one knew about the background of Ariff Alfian Rosli though the whole country was abuzz with his marriage to that Irish man. The most important part of the email was an allegation that Ariff Alfian was either a product of MC Gay Gay or STAR (Yep, no typo error. He wrote it as MC Gay Gay). I had this gut feeling that he wanted to say Ariff was a product of MCKK but since it was obvious to him that he was writing to a STAR web site, he lumped in STAR together for a good measure.

He credited lack of female counterparts as the main reason why MCKK and STAR became "bastions of homosexuality". According to him early gay experiences in these two boarding schools contributed the rise of homosexuality in the country. To shore up his argument he quoted the likes of Ariff Alfian Rosli and Anwar Ibrahim as examples. Of course the email came complete with various verses from Holy Quran and backed up by various hadith.

Yep, Anwar Ibrahim is a product of MCKK. But so far no one has proven he is a homosexual. Even courts of law have acquitted him of homosexuality charges. I am not a great fan of Anwar but politics play a major part in whatever allegation his past and current enemies have against him. To prove a point; when Anwar was the Deputy Prime Minister he was accused of being a homosexual by none other than the people who are now his close buddies. His present enemies were the ones who defended him. Isn't it odd to see the people who once defended him are now accusing him of homosexuality and the ones who accused him before are now his defenders. It is a crazy, crazy world.

And Ariff Alfian Rosli. He did not go to MCKK. Or to STAR. He was a student of a day school in Kuala Lumpur.

Of course, lack of female students caused some problems. It happened maybe 20 or 30 years ago when the world was still young and mobile phones and internet were something no one ever thought of. We had "jambus" back then. It is difficult for me to define what is exactly a "jambu"? That was the nearest thing to homosexuality that I could think of back in those days. It had more to do with a world void of females than homosexuality per se. In this age of internet and mobile phone, boarding schools are no longer like before. They don't have jambus now and they might not even understand what it is. If they miss their girlfriends they just sms, mms or just log in to their Facebook accounts. Or just take a train back home during the weekend for a quick date.

To me I find the very idea of homosexuality as repugnant. And I am a product of boarding schools. It is a mental illness typical of those with arrested mental development.

And the writer of that email. He has not replied to my email so I found no reason to publish his article.