Riotus Statisticus

As sweeping statements go, this one uttered in Parliament and published for the news reading public surely tops everything else.

"A study has found that, right now, three out of 10 men in Malaysia are gay. This is scary," he said when debating the motion of thanks for the royal address at the Dewan Rakyat sitting today.

Attributed by Bernama to YB Baharum Mohamad (BN, Sekijang) in a news piece about the call to “establish a homosexual rehabilitation centre to prevent same-sex relationships from getting rampant in the country.”

I don’t know whether to laugh or cry at this piece of statistical extravaganza.

And just how did the study extrapolate this particular ratio? By asking people: Are you gay? What about you? Perhaps You, Then?

Or perhaps it was by way of a survey:
Please tick your sexual preference – Gay, Not Gay, Wishy Washy Unsure, Don’t Care, Don’t Know.

How about some simple maths: Take the number of male Representative in Parliament and divide that by three; so some 67 of them are gays going by the so called finding.

Or the whole country: Around 14.2 million men in Malaysia, so some 4.7 million are gays.

I have to agree, THAT IS one huge figure.

And note that the key word here is men: females with same sex preferences are not included so the figure for rehab would balloon even more.

Good business, though, if you can get in: Billions of Ringgit in contracts, surely, for food, lodgings, admin stuff, the works…. PLKN-styled camps, maybe?

Am more curious as to why Bernama pick this, urm, piece of news up?

Scoring political brownie points? Highlighting the inane in our Parliamentary proceedings? Providing some LOL reading moments for its readers? Why?

At least, Bernama could have given us the background of this so-called study and its scope.

Here I was thinking of posting something about Marvel’s second run of the X-team’s Age of Apocalypse miniseries and my missing out on “The Siege” as well as “Fear Itself”, fed up with the unending run of Malaysian politics.

As it is and going by the news headlines of the MSM of late, the 13th General Election must be really, really close.

Can you smell what Jormungand is cooking?