The flame war began when Indonesian netizens bullied, harassed and threatened a Thai same-sex couple over posting photos of their April 4 wedding on Facebook. By late last week, the couple’s Facebook account had garnered 445,000 comments and 40,000 shares.

Most of the comments from Indonesian users were homophobic, even if they didn’t know the couple personally. This only reaffirms the results of the recent Microsoft survey that put Indonesia among the rudest nations when it came to internet and social media use, ranking it 29th out of the 32 surveyed countries.

Any decent Indonesian would tell you that those commenters hardly represent the nation. Indonesians, by and large, are tolerant. We have to be. Our diversity, whether by race or ethnicity, religion, culture or language, and yes, sexual orientation, requires tolerance to ensure peaceful coexistence across the archipelago.

While this may be true, it raises the questions: Where are these people? Why aren’t we hearing their voices?

If half of Indonesians are homophobic and the other half aren’t but are keeping mum about it, the world would still regard Indonesians homophobic as a whole. This perception wouldn’t change even if we lowered the ratio to, say, just 5 percent homophobic, if the majority 95 percent stayed silent anytime the lesbian, gay, bisexual, transgender and queer (LGBTQ) community came under attack, whether in Indonesia, Thailand or anywhere else in the world.

Whatever the true extent of homophobia in this country, our silence makes us complicit in hate crimes that target LGBTQ people. The homophobic label slapped on Indonesia will stick for a long time, unless more of us speak up and change the global perception.

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