Wow. My letter to TODAY actually got published! To think that I nearly missed reading it because I skipped breakfast on Friday. Haha.

Unfortunately, I’m having extremely mixed emotions about this. After feeling a small wave of excitement, I realize that my letter, as it was published, sucks.

It has no point, and sounds like the weird rambling of an incoherent buffoon. Most importantly, it sounds mundane and boring. Which is so far from what I had intended it to be.

The reason why, is that the TODAY publishers omitted the most crucial sentence in the entire thing.

(I think most of you can already guess what sentence I’m referring to.)

Indeed, as our society rapidly changes, there is a need to rethink traditional notions of “family”. (”Confucius Will Flip”, October 20)

But imagine if, in an effort to preserve a particular family model, the government required that grandparents, parents and children all lived together, made it compulsory for married couples to have children, and forbid single parenthood.

Imagine the outrage society will feel: surely we have the right to organize our own private lives. Yet this imaginary scenario is all too real for gay and lesbian Singaporeans, who are banned from forming a family of their own.

Indeed, it is time for us to accept that different people have different ideas of what “family” means to them, and stop demanding that everyone adheres to one particular family model.

I’m still glad that I got published, I suppose. But the point of the letter is very much lost.

And of course, as characteristic of the Mainstream Media, the letter was accompanied by a picture of a typical heterosexual family, as though afraid that other people might actually realize the implications of what I’m trying to say.

The only good thing is that the idea of government non-interference in private lives still comes through. Kind of.

Oh well, Jia Yi, you’re half right. They published most of my letter, but they certainly didn’t publish my views.