Minister against change of family concept

Minister against change of family concept

JAKARTA (JP): Minister of Population Haryono Suyono bristled
at recent suggestions that the concept of "family" be extended to
accommodate other types of relationships, including homosexuals.

The suggestions were explicitly made by activists of non-
governmental organizations (NGOs) and women's groups during the
recent Second Asia-Pacific Ministerial Meeting on Women in
Development here.

The activists are said to have planned to bring the notion,
through lobbying with country delegates, to the International
Conference on Population Development scheduled for September in
Cairo, Egypt.

"They want gay relationships and non-married couples to also
be called families...but we'll do everything to ensure that only
`proper' family structure be maintained," Haryono asserted when
he closed the congress of the Indonesian Family Planning
Association in Semarang earlier this month.

Haryono took the issue, which was pursued by the activists in
the name of human rights protection, very seriously. He said he
planned to garner support for his crusade from some friendly
countries, both developing and industrialized, which he will
invite here for a meeting on population in August.

"We pledge that we will ask the world to keep on respecting
the existing values of family," he said. "Even if we have to use
the language of Tarzan, we'll still do everything to make sure
that the other countries understand our stance."

He also reminded that the 1992 Indonesian law on the
development of population and prosperous families recognized only
married couples with or without children, a father and
child/children, or a mother and child/children.

During the June 4-17 Asia-Pacific Conference on Women here, a
preparatory meeting for the 1995 World Conference on Women in
Beijing, the association of women's groups who called themselves
the Asia Pacific Women's Action Network lobbied many parties to
have their suggestion accepted.

They asked, for instance, that the official documents at the
conference acknowledge that "lesbians face systematic physical
and psychological violence from family, society and state
institutions."

Changes

The women's groups also insisted that "lesbian relationships
be accorded recognition under the law" and that "denial of such
recognition is a violation of human rights."

Haryono's anger and the fact that the conference eventually
rejected the groups' calls for recognition of lesbian
relationships notwithstanding, there is no denying that even
Indonesian society is undergoing substantial cultural changes.

Despite claims that the nation is faithful to its traditional
family values, experts noted layers of the society which are
surreptitiously discarding those very values.

"Yes, changes in the structure of family are already showing,"
Yaumil Agoes Achir, former Dean of the School of Psychology,
University of Indonesia, and assistant to the Minister of
Population, told The Jakarta Post.

Examples of the ongoing trend are not hard to find. Ika (not
her real name), a woman in her early 30s and famous as both a
singer and executive of a private corporation, is only one.

The much-publicized woman can't seem to settle down and marry.
Instead, to appease her "need to nurture", she "adopts", though
not in a legal sense, an orphan. To her, she is already a mother.

Famous actress Dorce Gamalama, who underwent a sex-change
operation several years ago, adopted several children which
received no protest from the usually-sensitive public.

Famous, single male hairdresser, Hanky Tandayu publicly
adopted a boy, without so much as a whisper from the public as to
what psychological impacts such an arrangement would have on the
"son."

Prominent researcher from the Indonesian Institute of Sciences
(LIPI) Dewi Fortuna Anwar also detects the change. More
"conventional" changes like the fact that more women are entering
the work force have affected the structure or at least values
that families traditionally held, she said.

However, she is convinced that other, more drastic, changes
are also occurring. Many women, especially those who are highly
educated or have advanced their careers, have seriously
considered the option of living with a man out of wedlock, she
said.

Not to be overlooked are women who choose to stay single
because they are more "confident" and would not accept men who
cannot live up to their standards, Anwar said.

"Many women are now more confident of their ability to be
financially self-supportive that they can be more `choosy'," she
told the Post.

In short, options which less than two decades ago were not
even considered as alternatives are now being chosen.

Demographic

Agoes Achir agreed that changes are taking place, although she
considered them to be more demographic progress instead of
cultural. The increase in life expectancy to 64 years and the
fact that women outlive men mean that in the coming years there
will be more female-headed households, she said.

Increasingly high divorce rates also contribute to the growing
number of single parents, she said.

As for the "radical", cultural changes of the concept of
family, Achir is optimistic that their speed is not yet
"alarming".

She cited a number of sociology postulates which show that
families, as a subsystem of society, have natural mechanisms to
defend and maintain their identity even in the face of rapid
societal changes.

"We know that there will always be people who are so rational
that they decide whether or not to get married based on
calculations as to which one benefits them the most," she said.
"However, I believe that many of those confident, independent
women still favor the institution of marriage over single life,"
she said.

Despite her conviction that marriage and families will
prevail, Achir reminded that the rapid social, cultural changes
mean more efforts are needed to maintain the traditional values
and concept of family.

Achir believes it is fitting to remember those values on this
National Family Day, a day which is being remembered as the date
when in 1949 Indonesian families became reunited after being
separated by the war for independence. (swe)