Rainbowlution.
Isagani A. Cruz, a columnist for The Philippine Daily Inquirer, recently wrote an anti-gay article which appalled and disgusted me and dare I say more than half of the entire Philippine population. Granted that he's an old fart who is most likely behind on the times, but hey. I'm getting ahead of myself.
Don We Now Our Gay Apparel
by Isagani A. Cruz (08/12/2006)
Note: emphasis mine
HOMOSEXUALS before were mocked and derided, but now they are regarded with new-found respect and, in many cases, even treated as celebrities. Only recently, the more impressionable among our people wildly welcomed a group of entertainers whose main proud advertisement was that they were “queer.” It seems that the present society has developed a new sense of values that have rejected our religious people’s traditional ideas of propriety and morality on the pretext of being “modern” and “broad-minded.”
The observations I will here make against homosexuals in general do not include the members of their group who have conducted themselves decorously, with proper regard not only for their own persons but also for the gay population in general. A number of our local couturiers, to take but one example, are less than manly but they have behaved in a reserved and discreet manner unlike the vulgar members of the gay community who have degraded and scandalized it. I offer abject apologies to those blameless people I may unintentionally include in my not inclusive criticisms. They have my admiration and respect.
The change in the popular attitude toward homosexuals is not particular to the Philippines. It has become an international trend even in the so-called sophisticated regions with more liberal concepts than in our comparatively conservative society. Gay marriages have been legally recognized in a number of European countries and in some parts of the United States. Queer people -- that’s the sarcastic term for them -- have come out of the closet where before they carefully concealed their condition. The permissive belief now is that homosexuals belong to a separate third sex with equal rights as male and female persons instead of just an illicit in-between gender that is neither here nor there.
When I was studying in the Legarda Elementary School in Manila during the last 1930s, the big student population had only one, just one, homosexual. His name was Jose but we all called him Josefa. He was a quiet and friendly boy whom everybody liked to josh but not offensively. In the whole district of Sampaloc where I lived, there was only one homosexual who roamed the streets peddling “kalamay” and “puto” and other treats for snacks. He provided diversion to his genial customers and did not mind their familiar amiable teasing. I think he actually enjoyed being a “binabae” [effeminate].
The change came, I think, when an association of homos dirtied the beautiful tradition of the Santa Cruz de Mayo by parading their kind as the “sagalas” instead of the comely young maidens who should have been chosen to grace the procession. Instead of being outraged by the blasphemy, the watchers were amused and, I suppose, indirectly encouraged the fairies to project themselves. It must have been then that they realized that they were what they were, whether they liked it or not, and that the time for hiding their condition was over.
Now homosexuals are everywhere, coming at first in timorous and eventually alarming and audacious number. Beauty salons now are served mostly by gay attendants including effeminate bearded hairdressers to whom male barbers have lost many of their macho customers. Local shows have their share of “siyoke” [gay men], including actors like the one rejected by a beautiful wife in favor of a more masculine if less handsome partner. And, of course, there are lady-like directors who are probably the reason why every movie and TV drama must have the off-color “bading” [gay] or two to cheapen the proceedings.
And the schools are now fertile ground for the gay invasion. Walking along the University belt one day, I passed by a group of boys chattering among themselves, with one of them exclaiming seriously, “Aalis na ako. Magpapasuso pa ako!” [“I’m leaving. I still have to breastfeed!”] That pansy would have been mauled in the school where my five sons (all machos) studied during the ’70s when all the students were certifiably masculine. Now many of its pupils are gay, and I don’t mean happy. I suppose they have been influenced by such shows as “Brokeback Mountain,” our own “Ang Pagdadalaga ni Maximo Oliveros” (both of which won awards), “Queer Eye for the Straight Guy,” and that talk program of Ellen Degeneres, an admitted lesbian.
Is our population getting to be predominantly pansy? Must we allow homosexuality to march unobstructed until we are converted into a nation of sexless persons without the virility of males and the grace of females but only an insipid mix of these diluted virtues? Let us be warned against the gay population, which is per se a compromise between the strong and the weak and therefore only somewhat and not the absolute of either of the two qualities. Be alert lest the Philippine flag be made of delicate lace and adorned with embroidered frills.
---
Manuel L. Quezon III, a columnist for the same newspaper, responded curtly in defense of himself and the rest of the LGBT society with this article:
The Grand Inquisitor
by Manuel L. Quezon III (08/14/2006)
Note: emphasis mine
KURT VONNEGUT ONCE OBSERVED, “FOR SOME reason, the most vocal Christians among us never mention the Beatitudes. But, often with tears in their eyes, they demand that the Ten Commandments be posted in public buildings. And of course that’s Moses, not Jesus. I haven’t heard one of them demand that the Sermon on the Mount, the Beatitudes, be posted anywhere.” Vonnegut was pointing out the basic immorality of society’s self-proclaimed moral custodians. Hate the sin but love the sinner? But that opens to a possible debate on what is sin.
How much easier, more certain and eminently satisfying to decree, “Kill them all. God will know His own.” The result is the perversion of the finer instincts of religion into a false trinity-faith, hope and bigotry, setting aside charity which represents an inconvenient truth: Christ was friend to prostitutes and tax collectors, and He debated even with the devil. Must Christianity end with Christ?
Retired Supreme Court Justice Isagani Cruz says that his vigorous and vicious condemnation of gays, lesbians and transgendered people is not supposed to incite hatred and intolerance-or to be precise, that he is not invoking a blanket condemnation of all gay people. He only objects to some, not all. For example, he has nothing but the most generous and respectful thoughts for those who conform to what he finds tasteful and tolerable behavior. And what is tasteful and tolerable as far as his wounded sensibilities are concerned? A minority meekly and absolutely surrendering to the tyranny of the majority, a sub-culture reduced to the subhuman, in which the individual is instructed to live out, every day, a total repudiation of the self. Cruz demands the elimination of a diverse and rich culture-one that is as much a mirror of society’s larger complexities as it is an alternative to some of the worst instincts and features of the broader culture for which he has stepped forward as spokesman-because the minority displeases and disgusts him.
He would have me, and everyone else like me be a slave, a fugitive, a hypocrite and, most of all, a coward. And I find that disgusting. I find it neither reasonable nor acceptable. I do not even find it understandable. Cruz does not understand us, does not want to, would be unwilling to. Yet he says he hates only some, not all, of us, and expects “some of us” to embrace and thank him?
For what? That he reserves his scorn only for hairdressers and fashion designers? That he respects me, the writer, but heaps abuse on someone else because that someone uses slang I don’t use, speaks louder than I do, wears what I don’t wear-and those superficial differences are the things that guarantee me (and those who behave otherwise) Cruz’s respect?
I will not embrace him, not for that, much less shake his hand or offer him the opportunity for civilized disagreement. For he is blind to the civilization to which I belong, and to the fundamental identity I share with those he despises. Whether we have a little learning or not, whether we speak in the same manner or not, regardless of what we wear and what mannerisms we choose to exhibit, we are the same, for in the fundamental things-those we choose to love, to have relationships with and with whom we aspire to share a life marked by a measure of domestic bliss and emotional contentment-there is no difference. To permit Cruz to make such distinctions is to grant him and all those like him an intolerable-because it is fundamentally unjust-power to define myself and those like me.
When he casts the law as an instrument for prosecution, persecution and discrimination, he must be fought. That he discredits polite behavior by portraying civilized discourse as a fancy disguise for his uncritical obedience and intolerant enforcement of uniformity; that he defames religion by turning it into an ideology of hate; that he makes a mockery of filial piety by insisting that tyrannical instincts should be cultivated among the elderly and enforced upon their direction-these should inspire not pity for his moral dementia; these must provoke anger. And condemnation.
To be different is to be held in suspicion. The nonconformist is a subversive. Subversion and rebellion make societies become more generous, more diverse, more compassionate-and an individual more free. For the inability-or unwillingness-to see rebellion as a virtue and not a flaw is what provokes the uncomprehending hostility that makes the anxious herd stifle dissent and stamp out anything different. But humanity is not a herd, and being human demands a vigilance against the kind of provocations that start stampedes.
I will respect anyone’s convictions, but only to the extent you will respect mine. Goodwill inspires the same; tolerance results in cooperation. But I will not be told whom to love, whom to be friends with, what culture to represent, what mannerisms and interests to adopt and, much less, discard. I will not modify my behavior or limit my pleasures merely to please Cruz or bigots like him. The respect gays, lesbians and transgendered people experience is a brittle kind, but hard-won. Far more has to be won, in terms of actual legislation or in every sphere of our lives where discrimination virtually takes place every day.
The behavior Cruz finds so obnoxious is the price he and everyone else must pay for the pink triangles of the German concentration camps, the labor camps and prison cells of Soviet Russia and Communist China and Cuba, the merciless beatings and taunts endured by so many over so long a time. It is his punishment for representing a society whose instincts remain fundamentally murderous toward anyone different. If he weren’t such a hate-monger, he might realize it’s no punishment at all, and that society is all the better for the increased prominence of gays.
---
I know narrow-minded people like this Mr. Cruz still exist in the world today, but every time I come across them I am reminded about the thin line that we LGBT people are treading on every day of our lives. He says he does not condemn homosexuals who are not parading in the streets dressed up as who they are, but still he expects us to live in a world trapped within a society that merely defines only two genders: male and female. Anything beyond that to him is unacceptable. Can you imagine the horror of gay people walking around freely in this world?
This man is so misguided and I feel sorry for him for having to be put on the LGBT spotlight so late in his life. I am sorry that he lived his whole life believing that our "imperfect society" can only become perfect with the elimination of everyone else he discriminates against. In his snappy article after Mr. Quezon III's response, he says and I quote, "Also disagreeable to me are straight persons who wear loud clothes, flunkies, hypocrites, humbugs and other unpleasant figures, male and female, in our imperfect society. I have the right to criticize them even as they have the right to reply in the common exercise of our freedom of expression."
It is a waste that Mr. Isagani A. Cruz, a former justice of the Supreme Court and well-respected in Philippine society, will now be remembered as a person who lives in hate and intolerance.
Another respected newspaper in the Philippines, The Manila Times, responds to his sad article:
Gays Among Us
EDITORIAL (08/18/06)
Note: emphasis mine
ISAGANI A. CRUZ is not your run-of-the-mill journalist. He was a justice of the Supreme Court, a well-regarded civic leader and an eminent person in his profession.
On August 12, in his column, Mr. Cruz inveighed against homosexuals. He was promptly rebuked by another columnist of the same paper who said that he took offense because he himself is gay.
The testimony of a gay-rights organization in Congress last week may have served as the hook for Mr. Cruz’s comments. We also surmised that his comments were long held views that he could no longer resist bringing into the open.
If not for the hate and bigotry that Mr. Cruz’s column might engender we would not have written this editorial.
Gay rights were hard-won. That the larger Filipino community-along with communities in other countries-has learned to accept gays is cause for cheering and not jeering.
Mr. Cruz yearns for a prelapsarian age when there was only one homosexual in the Legarda Elementary School and one “in the whole district of Sampaloc” where he lived. Both provided the more manly students with “diversion.” Mr. Cruz, as an adolescent and later only as an adult, clearly did not look hard enough. Statistics would turn up more than two.
He argues that if there were only a few and that they disported themselves “decorously” he was willing to overlook their sexual preferences.
He finds their “vulgarity” intolerable and their sullying the “beautiful tradition of the Santa Cruz de Mayo” outrageous, even blasphemous.
Mr. Cruz is horrified that today “homosexuals are everywhere.” They are no longer “timorous”; they have become “audacious.”
He concludes his diatribe thus: “Must we allow homosexuality to march unobstructed until we are converted into a nation of sexless persons without the virility of males and the grace of females but only an insipid mix of these diluted virtues?”
Yes, Mr. Cruz, let us allow them to be what they are, to express themselves freely, to participate in whatever way they wish in every aspect of our national life.
We do not agree that by doing so we weaken our social fabric or dilute the genetic base of our nation.
In fact, we think that toleration and open acceptance of homosexuality and homosexuals will make our society stronger because such an attitude will rid it of hate and bigotry. Furthermore, homosexuality is not encoded in the genes.
Mr. Cruz’s idea of an acceptable social order is anathema to us. He calls it conservatism but it’s really conformism of a rather odious sort.
The Manila Times has always stood up for gay rights and for the toleration of those who are different not only in their way of life but, more important, in their ways of thinking.
We think we’re right.
---
It's funny because I was just thinking about how exactly the world has changed when it comes to the subject of homosexuality. Perhaps I have surrounded myself with friends who accept me as who I am, despite the few "friends" who still discriminate under the guise of tolerance -- men who say they "don't mind lesbians, but are disgusted by gays".
I have led myself to believe that the world isn't as bad as how other people seem to project it, that it has somewhat evolved into a more loving society that is not stuck within the confines of a Definition.
Last night at the Union Station, I have never felt so much like I belonged somewhere in my life. I have tried so hard in the past to resist picking out the "evil" from the "good", allowing myself to pretend that if I ignore the evil, they will just cease being evil and realize that we all are equal as human beings. Sometimes, I am able to do it, but most of the time, I feel like a fraud living among wolves who clench their jaws at me every single time I move. Last night, as I sat among a crowd of happy men and women, lesbians and gays, singing to Showtunes, drinking, dancing and just having a really good time talking about random non-hateful things, that I was surprised by the immense juxtaposition it presented to me -- for an hour earlier, in a different place among a different type of people, I was surrounded by ignorant fools who kept on making racist jokes and just plain derogatory remarks at people they don't consider on the same level as theirs.
As with former Justice Cruz, I feel sorry for them.
I long to stand up against such a crowd and defend what I believe in, and in context, who I am. I long to stand for what is right and for what is Fair and Free. I don't speak for the LGBT society alone. I speak for everyone else who are discriminated for their race, their color, their ethnicity, etc. I am appalled, every day of my life, for people who take lightly the jokes founded on racism and gender. I am disgusted by their loud mouths and their nasty laughter at the expense of other people. Every day of our lives, us LGBT carefully strive to build our network, filtering those who are hateful and arrogant and narrow-minded, but we long for the day when we will not have to separate anymore.
---
Friends (online and real life) who spread the word:
What's wrong with being a pansy?, Mikee
Brain is fried,
inquibbler
Retired SC Justice Isagani Cruz and his obsolete brain , Noel
untitled post,
kalawakankitty
Other links related to this:
Word Vomit
"You continue to defend your right to free speech and in so doing, you have publicly encouraged homophobia and homophobic acts to be inflicted upon us. And then you wonder why we took your opinion so personally? If only you have lived our lives, then you might have known."
An Open Letter to Mr. Isagani Cruz
"To him, only when we are invisible or servile to what he claims to be the “privileged sex” can we expect acceptance from our society."
Don We Now Our Gay Apparel
by Isagani A. Cruz (08/12/2006)
Note: emphasis mine
HOMOSEXUALS before were mocked and derided, but now they are regarded with new-found respect and, in many cases, even treated as celebrities. Only recently, the more impressionable among our people wildly welcomed a group of entertainers whose main proud advertisement was that they were “queer.” It seems that the present society has developed a new sense of values that have rejected our religious people’s traditional ideas of propriety and morality on the pretext of being “modern” and “broad-minded.”
The observations I will here make against homosexuals in general do not include the members of their group who have conducted themselves decorously, with proper regard not only for their own persons but also for the gay population in general. A number of our local couturiers, to take but one example, are less than manly but they have behaved in a reserved and discreet manner unlike the vulgar members of the gay community who have degraded and scandalized it. I offer abject apologies to those blameless people I may unintentionally include in my not inclusive criticisms. They have my admiration and respect.
The change in the popular attitude toward homosexuals is not particular to the Philippines. It has become an international trend even in the so-called sophisticated regions with more liberal concepts than in our comparatively conservative society. Gay marriages have been legally recognized in a number of European countries and in some parts of the United States. Queer people -- that’s the sarcastic term for them -- have come out of the closet where before they carefully concealed their condition. The permissive belief now is that homosexuals belong to a separate third sex with equal rights as male and female persons instead of just an illicit in-between gender that is neither here nor there.
When I was studying in the Legarda Elementary School in Manila during the last 1930s, the big student population had only one, just one, homosexual. His name was Jose but we all called him Josefa. He was a quiet and friendly boy whom everybody liked to josh but not offensively. In the whole district of Sampaloc where I lived, there was only one homosexual who roamed the streets peddling “kalamay” and “puto” and other treats for snacks. He provided diversion to his genial customers and did not mind their familiar amiable teasing. I think he actually enjoyed being a “binabae” [effeminate].
The change came, I think, when an association of homos dirtied the beautiful tradition of the Santa Cruz de Mayo by parading their kind as the “sagalas” instead of the comely young maidens who should have been chosen to grace the procession. Instead of being outraged by the blasphemy, the watchers were amused and, I suppose, indirectly encouraged the fairies to project themselves. It must have been then that they realized that they were what they were, whether they liked it or not, and that the time for hiding their condition was over.
Now homosexuals are everywhere, coming at first in timorous and eventually alarming and audacious number. Beauty salons now are served mostly by gay attendants including effeminate bearded hairdressers to whom male barbers have lost many of their macho customers. Local shows have their share of “siyoke” [gay men], including actors like the one rejected by a beautiful wife in favor of a more masculine if less handsome partner. And, of course, there are lady-like directors who are probably the reason why every movie and TV drama must have the off-color “bading” [gay] or two to cheapen the proceedings.
And the schools are now fertile ground for the gay invasion. Walking along the University belt one day, I passed by a group of boys chattering among themselves, with one of them exclaiming seriously, “Aalis na ako. Magpapasuso pa ako!” [“I’m leaving. I still have to breastfeed!”] That pansy would have been mauled in the school where my five sons (all machos) studied during the ’70s when all the students were certifiably masculine. Now many of its pupils are gay, and I don’t mean happy. I suppose they have been influenced by such shows as “Brokeback Mountain,” our own “Ang Pagdadalaga ni Maximo Oliveros” (both of which won awards), “Queer Eye for the Straight Guy,” and that talk program of Ellen Degeneres, an admitted lesbian.
Is our population getting to be predominantly pansy? Must we allow homosexuality to march unobstructed until we are converted into a nation of sexless persons without the virility of males and the grace of females but only an insipid mix of these diluted virtues? Let us be warned against the gay population, which is per se a compromise between the strong and the weak and therefore only somewhat and not the absolute of either of the two qualities. Be alert lest the Philippine flag be made of delicate lace and adorned with embroidered frills.
---
Manuel L. Quezon III, a columnist for the same newspaper, responded curtly in defense of himself and the rest of the LGBT society with this article:
The Grand Inquisitor
by Manuel L. Quezon III (08/14/2006)
Note: emphasis mine
KURT VONNEGUT ONCE OBSERVED, “FOR SOME reason, the most vocal Christians among us never mention the Beatitudes. But, often with tears in their eyes, they demand that the Ten Commandments be posted in public buildings. And of course that’s Moses, not Jesus. I haven’t heard one of them demand that the Sermon on the Mount, the Beatitudes, be posted anywhere.” Vonnegut was pointing out the basic immorality of society’s self-proclaimed moral custodians. Hate the sin but love the sinner? But that opens to a possible debate on what is sin.
How much easier, more certain and eminently satisfying to decree, “Kill them all. God will know His own.” The result is the perversion of the finer instincts of religion into a false trinity-faith, hope and bigotry, setting aside charity which represents an inconvenient truth: Christ was friend to prostitutes and tax collectors, and He debated even with the devil. Must Christianity end with Christ?
Retired Supreme Court Justice Isagani Cruz says that his vigorous and vicious condemnation of gays, lesbians and transgendered people is not supposed to incite hatred and intolerance-or to be precise, that he is not invoking a blanket condemnation of all gay people. He only objects to some, not all. For example, he has nothing but the most generous and respectful thoughts for those who conform to what he finds tasteful and tolerable behavior. And what is tasteful and tolerable as far as his wounded sensibilities are concerned? A minority meekly and absolutely surrendering to the tyranny of the majority, a sub-culture reduced to the subhuman, in which the individual is instructed to live out, every day, a total repudiation of the self. Cruz demands the elimination of a diverse and rich culture-one that is as much a mirror of society’s larger complexities as it is an alternative to some of the worst instincts and features of the broader culture for which he has stepped forward as spokesman-because the minority displeases and disgusts him.
He would have me, and everyone else like me be a slave, a fugitive, a hypocrite and, most of all, a coward. And I find that disgusting. I find it neither reasonable nor acceptable. I do not even find it understandable. Cruz does not understand us, does not want to, would be unwilling to. Yet he says he hates only some, not all, of us, and expects “some of us” to embrace and thank him?
For what? That he reserves his scorn only for hairdressers and fashion designers? That he respects me, the writer, but heaps abuse on someone else because that someone uses slang I don’t use, speaks louder than I do, wears what I don’t wear-and those superficial differences are the things that guarantee me (and those who behave otherwise) Cruz’s respect?
I will not embrace him, not for that, much less shake his hand or offer him the opportunity for civilized disagreement. For he is blind to the civilization to which I belong, and to the fundamental identity I share with those he despises. Whether we have a little learning or not, whether we speak in the same manner or not, regardless of what we wear and what mannerisms we choose to exhibit, we are the same, for in the fundamental things-those we choose to love, to have relationships with and with whom we aspire to share a life marked by a measure of domestic bliss and emotional contentment-there is no difference. To permit Cruz to make such distinctions is to grant him and all those like him an intolerable-because it is fundamentally unjust-power to define myself and those like me.
When he casts the law as an instrument for prosecution, persecution and discrimination, he must be fought. That he discredits polite behavior by portraying civilized discourse as a fancy disguise for his uncritical obedience and intolerant enforcement of uniformity; that he defames religion by turning it into an ideology of hate; that he makes a mockery of filial piety by insisting that tyrannical instincts should be cultivated among the elderly and enforced upon their direction-these should inspire not pity for his moral dementia; these must provoke anger. And condemnation.
To be different is to be held in suspicion. The nonconformist is a subversive. Subversion and rebellion make societies become more generous, more diverse, more compassionate-and an individual more free. For the inability-or unwillingness-to see rebellion as a virtue and not a flaw is what provokes the uncomprehending hostility that makes the anxious herd stifle dissent and stamp out anything different. But humanity is not a herd, and being human demands a vigilance against the kind of provocations that start stampedes.
I will respect anyone’s convictions, but only to the extent you will respect mine. Goodwill inspires the same; tolerance results in cooperation. But I will not be told whom to love, whom to be friends with, what culture to represent, what mannerisms and interests to adopt and, much less, discard. I will not modify my behavior or limit my pleasures merely to please Cruz or bigots like him. The respect gays, lesbians and transgendered people experience is a brittle kind, but hard-won. Far more has to be won, in terms of actual legislation or in every sphere of our lives where discrimination virtually takes place every day.
The behavior Cruz finds so obnoxious is the price he and everyone else must pay for the pink triangles of the German concentration camps, the labor camps and prison cells of Soviet Russia and Communist China and Cuba, the merciless beatings and taunts endured by so many over so long a time. It is his punishment for representing a society whose instincts remain fundamentally murderous toward anyone different. If he weren’t such a hate-monger, he might realize it’s no punishment at all, and that society is all the better for the increased prominence of gays.
---
I know narrow-minded people like this Mr. Cruz still exist in the world today, but every time I come across them I am reminded about the thin line that we LGBT people are treading on every day of our lives. He says he does not condemn homosexuals who are not parading in the streets dressed up as who they are, but still he expects us to live in a world trapped within a society that merely defines only two genders: male and female. Anything beyond that to him is unacceptable. Can you imagine the horror of gay people walking around freely in this world?
This man is so misguided and I feel sorry for him for having to be put on the LGBT spotlight so late in his life. I am sorry that he lived his whole life believing that our "imperfect society" can only become perfect with the elimination of everyone else he discriminates against. In his snappy article after Mr. Quezon III's response, he says and I quote, "Also disagreeable to me are straight persons who wear loud clothes, flunkies, hypocrites, humbugs and other unpleasant figures, male and female, in our imperfect society. I have the right to criticize them even as they have the right to reply in the common exercise of our freedom of expression."
It is a waste that Mr. Isagani A. Cruz, a former justice of the Supreme Court and well-respected in Philippine society, will now be remembered as a person who lives in hate and intolerance.
Another respected newspaper in the Philippines, The Manila Times, responds to his sad article:
Gays Among Us
EDITORIAL (08/18/06)
Note: emphasis mine
ISAGANI A. CRUZ is not your run-of-the-mill journalist. He was a justice of the Supreme Court, a well-regarded civic leader and an eminent person in his profession.
On August 12, in his column, Mr. Cruz inveighed against homosexuals. He was promptly rebuked by another columnist of the same paper who said that he took offense because he himself is gay.
The testimony of a gay-rights organization in Congress last week may have served as the hook for Mr. Cruz’s comments. We also surmised that his comments were long held views that he could no longer resist bringing into the open.
If not for the hate and bigotry that Mr. Cruz’s column might engender we would not have written this editorial.
Gay rights were hard-won. That the larger Filipino community-along with communities in other countries-has learned to accept gays is cause for cheering and not jeering.
Mr. Cruz yearns for a prelapsarian age when there was only one homosexual in the Legarda Elementary School and one “in the whole district of Sampaloc” where he lived. Both provided the more manly students with “diversion.” Mr. Cruz, as an adolescent and later only as an adult, clearly did not look hard enough. Statistics would turn up more than two.
He argues that if there were only a few and that they disported themselves “decorously” he was willing to overlook their sexual preferences.
He finds their “vulgarity” intolerable and their sullying the “beautiful tradition of the Santa Cruz de Mayo” outrageous, even blasphemous.
Mr. Cruz is horrified that today “homosexuals are everywhere.” They are no longer “timorous”; they have become “audacious.”
He concludes his diatribe thus: “Must we allow homosexuality to march unobstructed until we are converted into a nation of sexless persons without the virility of males and the grace of females but only an insipid mix of these diluted virtues?”
Yes, Mr. Cruz, let us allow them to be what they are, to express themselves freely, to participate in whatever way they wish in every aspect of our national life.
We do not agree that by doing so we weaken our social fabric or dilute the genetic base of our nation.
In fact, we think that toleration and open acceptance of homosexuality and homosexuals will make our society stronger because such an attitude will rid it of hate and bigotry. Furthermore, homosexuality is not encoded in the genes.
Mr. Cruz’s idea of an acceptable social order is anathema to us. He calls it conservatism but it’s really conformism of a rather odious sort.
The Manila Times has always stood up for gay rights and for the toleration of those who are different not only in their way of life but, more important, in their ways of thinking.
We think we’re right.
---
It's funny because I was just thinking about how exactly the world has changed when it comes to the subject of homosexuality. Perhaps I have surrounded myself with friends who accept me as who I am, despite the few "friends" who still discriminate under the guise of tolerance -- men who say they "don't mind lesbians, but are disgusted by gays".
I have led myself to believe that the world isn't as bad as how other people seem to project it, that it has somewhat evolved into a more loving society that is not stuck within the confines of a Definition.
Last night at the Union Station, I have never felt so much like I belonged somewhere in my life. I have tried so hard in the past to resist picking out the "evil" from the "good", allowing myself to pretend that if I ignore the evil, they will just cease being evil and realize that we all are equal as human beings. Sometimes, I am able to do it, but most of the time, I feel like a fraud living among wolves who clench their jaws at me every single time I move. Last night, as I sat among a crowd of happy men and women, lesbians and gays, singing to Showtunes, drinking, dancing and just having a really good time talking about random non-hateful things, that I was surprised by the immense juxtaposition it presented to me -- for an hour earlier, in a different place among a different type of people, I was surrounded by ignorant fools who kept on making racist jokes and just plain derogatory remarks at people they don't consider on the same level as theirs.
As with former Justice Cruz, I feel sorry for them.
I long to stand up against such a crowd and defend what I believe in, and in context, who I am. I long to stand for what is right and for what is Fair and Free. I don't speak for the LGBT society alone. I speak for everyone else who are discriminated for their race, their color, their ethnicity, etc. I am appalled, every day of my life, for people who take lightly the jokes founded on racism and gender. I am disgusted by their loud mouths and their nasty laughter at the expense of other people. Every day of our lives, us LGBT carefully strive to build our network, filtering those who are hateful and arrogant and narrow-minded, but we long for the day when we will not have to separate anymore.
---
Friends (online and real life) who spread the word:
What's wrong with being a pansy?, Mikee
Brain is fried,
inquibbler
Retired SC Justice Isagani Cruz and his obsolete brain , Noel
untitled post,
kalawakankitty
Other links related to this:
Word Vomit
"You continue to defend your right to free speech and in so doing, you have publicly encouraged homophobia and homophobic acts to be inflicted upon us. And then you wonder why we took your opinion so personally? If only you have lived our lives, then you might have known."
An Open Letter to Mr. Isagani Cruz
"To him, only when we are invisible or servile to what he claims to be the “privileged sex” can we expect acceptance from our society."