At Taylor's, A Bisexual Girl Asks Obama — 'Should Anyone Go To Jail For Being Different?'
And President Obama's answer is equally deserving of both applause and virality.
By Sadho Ram — 22 Nov 2015, 04:42 AM
US President Barack Obama, who is in Malaysia on a three-day visit, answered a multitude of important questions during his lengthy town hall session at the Young Southeast Asian Leaders Initiative (YSEALI) Summit held here at Taylor's University on 20 November
Obama answering questions from youths at the Taylor's University in Kuala Lumpur.
Image via Reuters/TMI
...inside, a brave bisexual woman from Thailand was asking the US President if anyone should be sent to jail for their sexual orientation
"Should anyone being LGBT have to go to jail? Should anyone being different have to go to the jail? How could we have regional or international co-operation if some countries are still having these kinds of programs?", asked Dora, who identified herself as bisexual.
"Look, the answer to the first question is simple: No," Obama responded to a round of applause from the crowd of 500 youths representing 10 ASEAN countries under the US YSEALI Summit
People of different sexual orientation deserved respect and dignity "like everybody else," the US President remarked to another round of applause, adding that they "shouldn't go to jail for it."
Obama said that while people had their own religious and cultural traditions, no one should force anyone to behave in a certain way.
"I know that in ASEAN countries, as well as in the United States, people have different religious traditions, they have different cultural traditions. And that's fine. What I always say to people is that nobody is forcing you to behave in a certain way. And nobody is saying that — for example, we just had this debate about whether same-sex couples could get married. And part of the point, I think, we made in this debate was, if a church or a mosque or a temple does not recognise those marriages, they shouldn't be forced to have to marry somebody that's contrary to their religious beliefs. But marriage as a civil institution by the state should be available to everybody, not just some."
"And so the point is, government policy should treat everybody equally under the law," he told the audience at Taylor's University, where the town hall session was held.
"The future of humanity depends on us all treating people with respect and dignity..."
"...and recognising that whatever your religious background, whatever your ethnicity, whether you're a man or a woman, whatever your sexual orientation, you have something in common with me — that we are both children of God; that we both were put here for a reason and are deserving of kindness and respect," he said.
President Obama then went on to urge the young leaders present there to promote this idea that everyone should be treated fairly in their countries, businesses and non-profit organisations
"If you're always thinking in terms of how do we make sure that everybody is treated fairly and everybody is deserving of respect, then there's no problem we can't solve," he said, adding that, "as soon as we lose that sight, lose that vision, and we start treating people differently because they're different than us, and we try to make ourselves more important by putting other people down, that's when bad things happen in every society. That's a universal truth."
The LGBT community here is regularly abused by the authorities and there are laws in certain states against cross-dressing.
Very recently, the Federal Court overturned a historic decision by Court of Appeal which had declared an enactment banning cross-dressing unconstitutional and void. On the other hand, we are among the worst countries in the world for transgenders: