How the concepts of marriage and family are defined and understood in the context of Singapore society

Running head: SOCIOLOGY
Sociology
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SOCIOLOGY 2
How the concepts of marriage and family are defined and understood in the context of
Singapore society
Singaporeans rise to be parents in different ways which include legal marriage, sperm
donation, surrogacy, and insemination according to Bodri, Nair, Gill, Lamanna, Rahmati, Arian-
Schad & Ahuja, (2018). However, many children who are born from the above means do not
their parents used which means to get them. The reason why parents do not want to expose the
methods is that of fear. There is various stigma including legal, religious and social concerns.
Many families are made up of the same sex. Either it is a man to a man or female to female.
Many of these families are facing a legal crisis because the law in Singapore does not recognize
the marriage of the same sex. For instance, in the post of ROM article, it illustrates a story of two
men who got married as husband and wife in the year 2015. They went on living together for
eight months, however, in February the year 2016, the marriage was void.
Chan, (2017) argues that, the Singapore lawyers claimed that the marriage was voided
because one person impersonated different gender. According to Singapore, at the time of
marriage, one individual must be male as the other one is female. At the point one, the two
people are found to be of the same gender, it is the duty of the authority to determine whether the
marriage is legal or void based on the Singapore laws.
The family is the basic unit which forms the society. When starting a family according to the
Singapore lawyers, the couples need to be of different gender. However, in most cases, two
people of the same sex agree to marry that as the time goes, one of them updates his or her
gender through surgery. When the register of marriage gets such instances, it had no option but
to cancel the wedding. There are various reasons why the authority does not accept such
marriages. The first issue is that the union to do not promote moral values to the society. For

SOCIOLOGY 3
instance, it leads to increase in lesbianism and gay behaviors to young members of the
community. The children who are brought up under same-sex marriage have difficulties in
recognizing the parents as their own.
Secondly, there is an issue with owning property as a couple in Singapore. The
heterosexual married couples enjoy right of property ownership in Singapore including housing.
Same-sex couples are out of the plan when the government finds out that the couples were of the
same sex, the probability of denying them the right of ownership is high. On the other hand,
Singapore has a tax directive; the heterosexual families are usually entitled to good tax breaks as
compared to same-sex couples in reference to Yulius, Tang & Offord, (2018). It is evident that
when ownership of property in a family is revoked, the children from the family experience
severe challenges in the future.
Consequently, many outsiders criticize Singapore for prohibiting marriage of the same
sex. Many people say that people have their rights of marriage and no one should be banned
from marrying the same gender. On the other hand, according to the religious norms, sanctioning
same-gender marriage is a right approach. The reason is that it will redeem the lost image of the
society. Religious leaders say that if people are allowed to go on with lesbianism and gay,
Singapore might end up having the most immoral society ever in future according to Rich,
(2017). The upcoming children would know that the only way to marriage is meeting somebody
of the same sex. There is a pressure from other countries such as the United States of America
where the authority has legalized the gay marriage. What is important here is to hold on the
culture. The marriage of the same sex was prohibited even in the traditional culture, and it is not
right that pressure from other countries influences the Singapore way of making laws.