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eware of the political year that is 2018, they said. On Jan. 27, police in North Aceh arrested transgender hairdressers and humiliated them before claiming that “queer people are more dangerous than terrorists.” The next Monday, subscribers of this newspaper woke up to the headline “Criminal Code bill threatens freedom”, which, for many, sounded terrifying.

Yes, Indonesia needs to update its penal code, but this is what is being prioritized: Motion to outlaw extramarital sex by expanding the definition of zina (adultery). Motion to outlaw sex and relationships between gay people. Motion to outlaw insults against religious figures; to outlaw discussion on communism; and, finally, to outlaw “unauthorized” advocacy of birth control.

These articles are not law — yet. But many people fear that no political party in the House of Representatives will strongly oppose this absurd draft. A former member of the National Commission on Human Rights has demanded the imprisonment of activists bringing issues on sexual minorities to the fore. He also said political parties that disagree with such requests should expect public scrutiny in the 2019 general election. People’s Consultative Assembly Speaker Zulfiki Hasan claimed five political parties supported same-sex marriage without providing further information, before Religious Affairs Minister Lukman Hakim Saifuddin said such support was impossible in Indonesia.

This is a straightforward offering to conservative voters. According to a recent survey by the SMRC research institute, most Indonesians agree that gay people have the right to live here, and that the government needs to protect them — even though most Indonesians agree that religions forbid their right to identify and express themselves as gay. In mainstream media and politics, however, no one champions the rights of gay people, and no public figure publicly identifies as gay.

The draft, however, threatens to criminalize heterosexual people as well, including non-married couples, Indonesians who do not follow an official religion, human rights and public health activists, tourists and foreign citizens, academics and public intellectuals.

This is precisely what the conservatives want: an Indonesia where conservative values rule, where firebrand clerics are feared, where the left-leaning, and even professional journalists and academics, have no voice, and where the birth rate remains high. These conservatives are mostly Muslims, together with military hawks. They count that, at this rate, no political party or population would dare to challenge their demands, lest they would be painted as immoral liberals.

Many Christians are also openly homophobic and agree with conservative Muslims that gay people could destroy Indonesia, whether by God’s wrath — such as through an earthquake — or by turning children gay, therefore decreasing the population of religious Indonesians.

This fear of depopulation is real. In the West, white supremacists repeatedly talk about “white genocide,” dreading they would become a minority due to the immigration of non-whites, especially Africans and Middle Easterners, and the decreasing birth rate and marriage rate among the white population — which also happens among affluent non-white groups. Like the Islamists, white supremacists believe Jews are conspiring to spread homosexuality, feminism and multiculturalism to weaken their society.

Indonesian elites do not openly blame Jews anymore, but publicly share their theory that homosexuality is a part of a “proxy war” to weaken Indonesia, since it is “contagious,” as if it is a zombie virus. At this point, I am not sure which is scarier for them — that no one will procreate anymore, or that they could be “infected” and become gay too.

At first, it is unthinkable that Indonesians worry about a declining birth rate. Both the public and the government worry more about “population explosion,” as parents cannot afford to feed and educate their children and medical institutions do not have enough hands to look after them.

What the conservatives fear is not a poor population. They fear a liberal population that does not need them — Indonesians who do not need the clerics and the generals. In fact, they hardly care about the welfare of poor children, believing that getting them into religious schools and dressing them in religious outfits would be enough to improve their lives. It is preferable if the children depend on religious groups and are more receptive to hard-line messages.

This is also the case in the West. Racists do not care that migrants and minorities are as smart, as caring and as hardworking as they are. Instead, they despise the fact that people of color are as capable as they are, and fear that non-whites would take jobs and opportunities meant for their children.

Besides blaming migrants (until last year, some Indonesians fell for a hoax saying that millions of Chinese citizens were swarming Indonesia), these people also blame women for having a good education and careers, and for being able to choose their romantic and sexual partners. They long for the early 20th century when women seemed to be destined to become housewives and bear plenty of children — and when society seemed uniform.

The world is undertaking a big demographic change. White Americans might no longer be a majority in the United States, China might not be the most populous nation anymore and some African countries like Nigeria might overtake Indonesia in terms of population. Meanwhile, Indonesia would overall stay the same — in a Muslim-majority country, the Javanese would remain the majority ethnic group; economically it would trail Malaysia and Singapore; and politically it would remain Southeast Asia’s best hope for democracy.

None of these forecasts comfort the bigots. They benefit from a democratic and vibrant Indonesia, but the more they flourish, the more they hate to share space with people from different creeds, regions and sexual orientations. They will vote for candidates who promise uniformity and privileges for the majority, and punishments for the minorities. For them, the suffering of others means a brighter future for their children.

At the time of writing, more than 33,000 people have signed an online petition on change.org against the proposed articles, which could punish women, children and minorities. Several Indonesians have informed their social circles on what could happen in Indonesia, and some foreigners have contacted their foreign ministers to raise concern.

It is a good thing that several media outlets such as The Jakarta Post have informed the public on this issue. Hopefully, a more concerted effort from the public influences political figures to get their priorities right — protection for the vulnerable over a moral crusade.
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