EVs, Mormons, and conservative Catholics in the US must be salivating with envy...

https://www.bbc.com/news/world-asia-63869078

Indonesia's parliament has approved a new criminal code that bans anyone in the country from having extramarital sex and restricts political freedoms.

Sex outside marriage will carry a jail term of up to a year under the new laws, which take effect in three years.

The raft of changes come after a rise in religious conservatism in the Muslim-majority country.

Critics see the laws as a "disaster" for human rights, and a potential blow to tourism and investment.

They apply equally to locals and to foreigners living in Indonesia, or visiting holiday destinations such as Bali. Under the laws unmarried couples caught having sex can be jailed for up to a year.

They are also banned from living together - an act for which people could be jailed for up to six months. Adultery will also be an offence for which people can be jailed.

Yeah, that's going to put a damper on tourism. Good luck with that.

ETA: In my opinion, this will also deter TV and film production. Why take a risk with your cast and crew?

How will the tourism destinations know which couples are married and which are not? Upon marriage, individuals can choose to change their name(s) - or retain their "unmatched' Surnames.

It is difficult to imagine a resort requiring people to present their marriage certificate.

Or, if paperwork is necessary, there is a ripe market for online fake marriage certificates...

The thing is, why take the risk? There are plenty of other beautiful, warm beaches in the world that would be much more welcoming (Hawaii, Mexico, Australia, etc.) Honestly, even as a single woman I would not visit a country with such harsh laws, because you never know when those laws might be mistakenly turned against you.

Although I agree that the hotels are likely to turn a blind eye as long as tourists play the game.

This is going to give the U.S. State Department any number of headaches in bailing out unsuspecting tourists.

They acknowledge the difficulty in enforcement and call for tips.

Another culture turf battle.



Edited 1 time(s). Last edit at 12/06/2022 11:40AM by anybody.

I foresee a lot of selective enforcement.

...most of the enforcement will be against women, both rich and poor. This is how such laws have worked in the past and this is how they will work again. Welcome to religious authoritarianism!

Islam screws yet another country.

I have a hunch that the sex repressed-obsessed perverts who made the law can hardly wait to snoop around into everyone's sex lives. I think they get some jollies finding, investigating and punishing wanton women.

I will go so far as to say that is a perk and attraction for certain types of people to become involved in religion. Now conservative lawmakers get to join in. Of course, they will get away with their own affairs while criticizing everyone else, just like our politicians here because the people who make laws like this are always hypocrites.

That said, this is part of the ongoing attempt to keep women in their place, just like stoning them and burning them. We all know women take the brunt of the punishment while the perverts gawk with glee to see the cruelty and enforcement.

Note the article mentions 6 blasphemy laws and that atheism is unacceptable. This is religion, folks. It's not good.

"[Researcher Andreas Harsano] added that research from Gulf states, where there are similar laws governing sex and relationships, showed women were punished and targeted by such morality laws more than men.

There are now also six blasphemy laws in the code, including apostasy - renouncing a religion. For the first time since its independence, Indonesia will make it illegal to persuade someone to be a non-believer.

New defamation articles also make it illegal for people to insult the president or criticise state ideology."

Yup, punish women and reward those in charge. Business as usual.

>
> For the first time since its
> independence, Indonesia will
> make it illegal to persuade
> someone to be a non-believer.
>


I hope the Indonesia Mission MP considers this when he thinks about how to fire up his Elders and Sister Missionaries!

I'm 'sure' (but not certain...) this will prevent ALL unmarried sex AND affection;

Good Times in Indonesia are sure to follow!!

I thought BYU solved this problem. Does the law mention durfing or soaking?

Also, accidentally tripping and falling into a vagina cannot be seen as "having intent"!!!

What is durfing and why didn't I get that memo???

Got That.

ChurchCo can / would Never say 'Have Fun but Be Careful'

That was originally called dry h**ping.

...also Levi-loving...

In 1967 I had two dates with a blonde BYU coed who was enthusiastic about Levi-loving. Both dates climaxed with fabric on fabric, but she "repented" of it afterward and made us pray for forgiveness.

I must have been a real stick-in-the-mud back then because I didn't ask her out a third time.  Today's EOD would bring Gregorian chants to accompany our earnest prayers for forgiveness...candles, too.  Now I'd keep trying no matter how long it took to get it right!

Her name was Wendy, and she was from Canada.  

Yeah, that's the first thing I wondered, but Wendy Watson Nelson would only have been 17 then, and she has dark hair and didn't get to the Y until around 1974.

I wonder who humped her at BYU-H and the Y?

7th Century crashes into the 21st.

It's not pretty.

I agree with summer and others. Plenty of other destinations. Perhaps loss of tourism trade will speak more loudly than leaders' concerns about what people (especially women) do in privacy.

Hardly a day goes by that I'm not completely thrilled to live in North America, even with our own whole mess of thorny issues going on.

However, its easy to see, and scary, how freedoms can be scooped up and discarded by fundamentalists. As our national anthem says, it's imperative that we "stand on guard" against tyranny in all its forms.

It takes foresight, thought, attention and courage but look what all we have to lose if we let down our guard.

Sex outside.

Elder Berry Wrote:
-------------------------------------------------------
> Sex outside.

It's a freezing, rainy, snowy, dark, blustery day here in my little acre of British Columbia so, depending on one's preferences I guess, that isn't as appealing as it may first appear.

Laws are one thing. Enforcement is another. They might let things slide in the touristy areas. Bali has never been a center of virtue.

True, but it signals a generally unfriendly attitude towards women, and a religiously generated intolerance for differences.

Whatever. Most places in the world don’t give a rat’s ass. Power does what it does.

Yes, but what I'm saying is that women, LBGTQ, etc., may no longer feel comfortable traveling there.

Well, now I got to scratch Indonesia off my bucket list.

Perhaps Iran’s morality police would be willing to relocate.

And Herschal Walker is available.

And Utah’s Department of Alcoholic Beverage Control could could offer pointers on how to enforce the new law.

My late wife grew up in Jakarta.

There is all sorts of room for trouble with these new laws.

It's not uncommon for people to convert from Christianity to Islam, or vice versa, when marrying. How will that now stack up re. the new apostasy rules?

Others have noted above that women usually bear the brunt of these sorts of rules, but in this case it's flagrantly biased against women because Muslim men can have multiple wives in Indonesia. There are some restrictions, but those men can obviously "legally" have sex with multiple women, while women can only engage in sexual relations with their one husband.

The restrictions allow for up to four wives, but not necessarily four, so if they believe the Quran allows up to four wives, but don't meet the legal requirements to take an additional wife--one of which is permission from the first wife--they can marry "privately," which is not a "legal" marriage. So I wonder how the new laws will impact women in those sort of arrangements.

Fascinating, Gordon.

If I may ask, was your wife Indonesian or Dutch? I knew some Europeans who lived through the war and had remarkable, if sad, stories to tell.

Well, as she used to put it, her mom was mostly Indonesian, and her dad was mostly Dutch. She estimated that she was half Asian and half Caucasian. Her dad was from an area that had a pretty strong Dutch affinity (North Sulawesi). Her mom came from an island even farther north, but they met in Jakarta, and my wife grew up there.

Unfortunately, I don't know as much about the war there as I'd like to.

Sulawesi. There's a crystal clear harbor there in which a Japanese Zero is still visible 30 or 40 feet below the surface. . .

Anyway, the friends to which I alluded--now quite old--are, like your wife, of mixed ancestry. When the Japanese arrived they were arrested and imprisoned in concentration camps for educated Indonesians. When the war ended, the nationalists arrested them as Westerners and threw them in their own prisons. In both cases they were treated as the "other" because they were not racially pure. Thus they lost almost a decade of freedom before being released and making their way to the West.

Did your wife become a Mormon? That in itself must be quite a story.

Both my mother- and father-in-law were born after the war.

My wife was never a mormon. I'm a nevermo. The TBMs in my family are my brother's clan. He married a mormon girl straight out of high school.

Wow. It sounds as if your wife passed away at a relatively young age.

I'm sorry if that's the case--although I guess there's never a good time.

Thanks for the kind words.

She was only 45 when she passed. Her mom was 19 when she was born. Her dad is 70 now, so born in '52.

I'm so very sorry to read that. Far too young...

Only the good die young...

I remember my mom passing away at 50, and everyone said, "she's so young." At the time, I was 25 and thought, "50 is not young!" Don't get me wrong--I was sad to lose my mom--I just didn't consider 50 "young." But now I can say with certainty that it is, and 45 is even younger. :(

I dread such a law for anywhere, they'll have the 'Morality Police' arbitrarily forcing it.



Edited 1 time(s). Last edit at 12/12/2022 12:24AM by GNPE.

The governor of Bali has just announced that the new law will not be enforced on his enchanted isle.

I hope y'all didn't cancel your tickets prematurely.

Interesting.

Bali has been the target of terrorism in the past, because of its reputation as a destination for "decadent" westerners.

I hope there is no "informal" enforcement of the new rules.

I thought about that, too. Hard Rock Cafe, 2005.

I think the government made it clear to the religious enthusiasts that God's writ stops just east of Surabaya.

Yes, I believe Bali's majority is Hindu.

Yes, a very unusual form of Hinduism from before the Muslim conquests.

Indian faiths dominated Sumatra and Java from the beginning of the Common Era, but centuries later Islamic states formed and embarked on the suppression of Hinduism and Buddhism. Hindu refugees fled across the strait to Bali, reinforcing the mixture of animism and ancestor worship and Hinduism that already existed there. The unique blend continued to evolve independently of India itself, leaving that single island of religion in the Indonesian archipelago.

The 15,000 islands that comprise that country present fascinating case studies in biological and religious evolution in semi-isolation. If you then add in the Malaysian and Filipino worlds, it just gets better!

My understanding is that Islam in Indonesia has traditionally been very moderate, but that extremism has been steadily creeping in.

My wife told me that it was typical to sign in and out of high-rise office buildings, so it could be determined who was inside if it were to suffer a terrorist attack. She worked for an international organization though, so I don't know if it was just for those sort of buildings, or all of them.

One province already has special autonomy to enforce religious law. But naturally, there are double standards. For example, here's a story from earlier this year about a woman receiving 100 lashes for adultery (her partner received only 15):

https://sg.news.yahoo.com/indonesian-woman-flogged-100-times-120629819.html


Here's a video of a woman being canned for PDA:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=y3uL-ImE3Mc


Here's a story from 2014 about a woman gang-raped after being caught in adultery:

https://religionnews.com/2014/05/08/indonesian-woman-gang-raped-faces-caning-adultery/

The woman above was gang-raped by the men who burst in to catch them, who apparently saw no contradiction or irony in their own "impure" actions. And then they reported the couple to authorities for their "crime".

The rape was condemned by authorities, but had no impact on the woman's punishment. She received nine lashes. So did the man in this case (but I assume he wasn't gang-raped).

BTW, Indonesia had already been "cracking down" on the LGBT community for several years, even though it was technically not illegal:

https://www.cnn.com/2017/05/31/asia/indonesia-lgbt-rights

Yes, Indonesia has been moving away from its traditional moderation due in part to the Saudi-inspired and -financed extremism that has been advancing in most other Islamic countries as well.

There has been a pattern of political instability and terror since WWII. There was some resistance to the Dutch before WWII, but the real change occurred during that war because the Indonesian opposition couldn't field armies and had to work through guerilla forces. The tendency continued after the war as Nationalists tried to oust the Dutch (much as in Indochina, successful in 1949) but tensions remained between the Indonesians and the Chinese community, peaking with the abortive Chinese-inspired civil war in the middle 1960s (and described in The Year of Living Dangerously). But even now there are heliports on the tops of Chinese-owned buildings in Jakarta . . . just in case.

The Islamic polarization came more recently. You refer to the imposition of limited Sharia law in Aceh Province in Sumatra. That arose as part of a separatist movement and civil war and resulted in more regional autonomy and hence more aggressive Islam as a means of differentiating the local community from the national government. But yes, that is part of a gradual tightening of social conditions throughout the country.

It hasn't gone anywhere near as far as in Pakistan and Afghanistan, but it is unfortunate. Southeast Asia has always been a great place but it is less great now than it used to be.