Gavin Chow, 26, speaking on behalf of an online LGBT support group People Like Us Hang Out (Pluho), said Amar’s comments were “ridiculous and stupid”.
“LGBTs are not the ‘national issues of the nation’. But once again, LGBTs are being used as a smokescreen to sweep such an important issue like child marriage under the carpet, and sensationalise the issue of being LGBT,” he told FMT.
Yesterday, Amar said child marriages should not be sensationalised and made a national issue, amid public outrage over the marriage of 11-year-old girl and a 41-year-old rubber dealer in Gua Musang.
The PAS leader said issues involving LGBTs, illicit sex, and children out of wedlock were in need of more urgent attention.
Chow said Amar’s statement reinforced the idea that LGBTs threatened the fabric of Malaysian society.
“Because of all these men, child marriage is still happening and we cannot know for sure what will happen to these victims in their households and what the future holds for them,” he said.
He said Pluho was standing in solidarity with marginalised groups such as LGBTs, adding that it also wanted an end to child marriage.
The current legal age for marriage under civil law is 18 and 16 for Muslims, although shariah judges and state leaders are empowered to lower the minimum age requirement.
Meanwhile, activist-lawyer Siti Kasim hit back at minister in the Prime Minister’s Department in charge of religious affairs Mujahid Yusof Rawa.
Mujahid told the Malay Mail that Malaysians were free to practise whatever they believed in private, but that these practices became a “problem” when publicly propagated.
“If it is against my religion, then there is an issue,” he was quoted as saying.
But Siti Kasim told FMT that Mujahid’s remarks were “problematic”.
“While I applaud the minister for his openness and willingness for dialogue, and for reaffirming the rights of individuals to personal freedom, the type of thinking indicated by his other remarks has to stop and be stopped by our political leaders in our society,” she said.
“That is nothing more than tyranny of the majority. Our elected representatives and government leaders cannot be propagating such a notion.”
Kelantan says child marriage not wrong, homosexuality bigger issue