Constitution protects both equality and morality

The letter “Constitution should be based on idea of civil association, not consensus” (Nov 6) is misconceived.

While the Constitution protects the rights of all citizens, no matter their sexual orientation, it also has a compelling public interest in protecting public morality.

Article 12 means that all persons, minorities or not, have equal standing before the law.

At the same time, laws are inherently discriminatory because they prescribe standards of behaviour that distinguish the legal from the illegal. The key to understanding the concept of equality is to inquire if the law discriminates legitimately. Discriminatory law is good law if it has a rational relation to the purpose it seeks to achieve.

Individual rights are not absolute. Across jurisdictions such as Europe, the United States and Singapore, public morality is a common legal limitation on many constitutional rights and liberties such as free speech.

Public morality presumes a society’s moral character and therefore gives the state a legitimate role in preserving its moral ecology. This does not violate any constitutional principle of free and equal citizenship, as contended in the letter.

Public morality is not a matter of personal taste; it is derived from the obligation to limit the choices and behaviour of individuals to protect the moral ecology as an expression of the common good in society.

This common good of public morality generates obligations of justice for all individuals to respect. For instance, assuming that it is immoral to watch pornography, it would be unjust to tempt men to do so by making it available and thus compromise their moral character. This is why the Government blocks some pornographic sites as a symbolic statement of our shared values.

While competing prudent considerations may stop legislation from regulating certain immoral behaviour, public morality is a legitimate constitutional concern and should otherwise be protected robustly.