JULY 9 — The on-going controversy over the marriage of an 11-year-old girl to a 41-year-old man was given more fuel recently when Kelantan deputy mentri besar Datuk Mohd Amar Nik Abdullah said the issue was over-sensationalised; better to focus on LGBT matters and illicit sex.

Although I wasn’t all that surprised that the leader of a fundamentalist party feels that the legalised rape of minors is less important than what consenting adults choose to do, I confess I was a bit disappointed.

I thought that a New Malaysia could inspire all parties to be better than that, and was hoping that PAS could roll somewhat with the times even if not entirely. 

Then again, what can you expect from a party who can tell its followers that it was God who “allowed” them to lose in order that Pakatan Harapan can deal with the nation’s trillion-dollar debt only after which PAS will be given the country to rule.

That’s one heck of a “Malaysia Boleh” version of sour grapes if ever there was one. If the fox can’t reach the grapes, not only does it assert that the grapes were sour in the first place, it also proclaims that sweetness isn’t much sought after.

But back to child marriages. My concern is not so much with the justification for child marriage nor with legislation allowing it. It’s really about the effects of seeking to police morality.

If a society gets too hung up about people’s private lives, we end up neglecting and even damaging the public sphere.

PAS apparently cannot fathom how the protection of minors is something that governments (whether state or federal) must be concerned about, whereas people’s sex lives are none of Putrajaya’s business.

Child marriages is what occurs when we get so caught up telling people how to live their lives that we ignore the true injustices in the land.

But, for the love of Malaysia, it’s not the job of governments to tell people how to live their lives; its job is to ensure that life can go on being lived without people tearing each other limb from limb.

Besides, why some people in government remain obsessed with other people’s sex lives is a question folks like PAS need to ask themselves more. Why are you so fixated with the gender of the person I fall in love with? Why are you so preoccupied with what couples choose to do or not do on Valentine’s Day?

Not merely a ‘religious’ problem

If we believe this is a problem only for religious fundamentalists, we couldn’t be more wrong. Because the social media revolution has opened the floodgates for everyone to scold everyone else about the wrong in their lives (or their tweets).

The millennial who feels offended by something someone said and believes that everyone should feel as offended as him is, practically, singing the same tune as state ministers who prefer monitoring the proximity between couples as opposed to protecting the innocence of children. 

Because who are you to demand that others have exactly the same (probably narrow-minded) opinion about what person says, let alone what he or she may have meant? And if I refuse to join a mob to tear a certain person down — whether it be Donald Trump or Jamal Yunos — who are you to pronounce I am “less righteous” than you?

Likewise, politically-correct minded people who continually pressure others to avoid certain terms and use only “approved” ones are, in essence, no different from religious fundamentalists who stalk the LGQBT community and cry murder at the barest hint of “forbidden” intimacy. 

So, for the last time, the role of governments is not to stop people from offending or inconveniencing each other; their role is stop us from destroying each other. The push towards political correctness — not unlike the demand to police sexuality ─ conflates the two.

And if you disagree, that’s fine.

Just don’t go telling me how to live my life.

* This is the personal opinion of the columnist.