Dr. Zulkifli Hasan, Malaysia’s Minister of Religious Affairs, found an explanation for everything. On January 27, 2026, in a written parliamentary response in Kuala Lumpur, he stated that stress at work, social influence, and weak religious practice are factors that can lead people to adopt an LGBTQ+ identity. In other words: if you suffer too much at the office, according to him, you become gay. 😐
The reaction was immediate. On X and TikTok, Malaysians themselves turned the statement into an instant meme. Some joked about taking days off, others calculated how many extra work hours they needed. Human rights organizations such as Justice For Sisters demanded a formal retraction and called the remarks “dehumanizing” and “anti-scientific”. The minister responded by asking people to read his full text and insisted that he was taken out of context. 🙃
The detail that makes it all even stranger: Malaysia still criminalizes homosexuality under a colonial-era law, and just two months earlier, in November 2025, more than 200 people were arrested in a raid on a venue in Kuala Lumpur. 😬
