A few days ago I offerred a summary of some of the great pro LGBT commentaries on the Internet about Comelec's rejection of Danton Remoto's Ang LadLad party list application (again).
Virtually the same day I found myself in La Funeraria Paz offering my sympathy to my longtime friend and co-activist, Danton, on the occasion of the sudden death of his mother. (Yes, I thought it was some terrible mixup. But it was his mother, this time; it was his father who had died last month. Much caring concern for you, Danton, on these two successive personal losses -- and then the Comelec iodicy, too.
This is a good time to recommend that you get to know this outstanding leader in the LGBT community, winner of the Pink Feather Award and many other honors. Check him out on the Internet.
Danton Remoto
July 6, 2009 at 9:41 am (Prof. Danton Remoto, elections)
Caption: Danton Remoto brings his pink army to the electorate. Photo by Pol Briana, Jr. Manila Bulletin
Pink Revolution: Ang Ladlad’s Danton Remoto
60 Minutes
June 28, 2009
Manila Bulletin
Will Danton Remoto be the Philippines’ answer to Harvey Milk?
Milk made history in 1977 when he became the first openly gay man elected into public office. Remoto is yet to do the same, but the impact he’s made on the Filipino lesbian, gay, bisexual and transgender (LGBT) community is certainly as impressive as Milk’s history-making feat.
Remoto, with fellow writer J. Neil Garcia, was behind the pioneering “Ladlad: An Anthology of Philippine Gay Literature.” Its effect on Filipino culture has been immense. Ladlad has gone through several editions, has resulted in the teaching of gay literature classes at the University of the Philippines and Ateneo de Manila University, and is credited for Ang Ladlad, the partylist that Remoto formed in 2003.
“We started in September 2003 with only one mandate — to help Akbayan push the Anti-Discrimination Bill which was filed in 1999,” he says of Ang Ladlad’s beginnings. “Congress is not really against it, but they just think it is not as important. So lagi, ang mga bading, lesbians, transgender, bisexual, laging, kung baga cameo role lagi.”
Fighting for one’s rights is certainly nothing new for Remoto. With his father in the military, Remoto grew up with the belief that nobody should take any abuse lying down.
“My father was a military officer and we were trained to be amazons. Isa lang ang turo niya: You study hard; you study well at ‘pag may umaway sa inyo at umuwi kayo ng luhaan, papaluin ko kayo; you should learn to be tough and fight back,” he recalls with a laugh. “So ang nangyari ngayon, may mga pumupunta sa bahay namin na mga magulang, ‘Naku sir, ‘yang anak ninyong bading binugbog ang anak ko.’ Sabi ng tatay ko ‘Eh di, mabuti!’”
Remoto does the same fighting for the LGBT community. Whether it’s freeing hundreds of gay men being detained illegally or arguing for lesbians and transgenders who have been discriminated against for their sexual orientation, Remoto and his allies are always ready with a legal challenge and a witty retort.
“You have to show them that you will not allow this. If you show them that you will fight back, they will move away. Bullies are really cowards,” he says.
Remoto’s fight for equal rights would have reached its peak in the 2007 elections had Ang Ladlad been allowed to run as partylist, but the COMELEC refused to accredit the group, citing its lack of constituents. It is Remoto, however, who has the last laugh, as he is now planning to run for the Senate on an education platform.
“I’m running on a platform of education because I’ve been teaching for 22 years. ‘Yun talaga ‘yung alam na alam kong issue, ‘yun gay rights, kasama na ‘yan sa education.
Open-mindedness is a function of education, kasi ang tao kapag pinaaral mo, luluwag ang isip. Education is what we really need in this country,” he says.
To close June as the Pride Month, Danton Remoto lets it all out: about being gay in the Philippines, his vision for the Philippine LGBT community, and the possibility of being the country’s first openly gay senator. (RONALD S. LIM)
To continue, since my previous blog, the Internet continues to buzz with brilliant reactions to the stupid Comelec action. (I guess they have a right to "decide," but do they have the right to add ridiculing remarks to their decisions?)
I don't think I need to continue the summaries here (they are coming in from everywhere).
There is still the motion for recobnsideration to the full Comelec and the appeal to the Supreme Court.
But no sooner did I write those preceding words than my attention was caught by an opnion column in today's Inquirer. Let me just give a selected few of the highly quotable quotes.
Commentary
Why Ang Ladlad should thank the Comelec
By Florin T. Hilbay
Philippine Daily Inquirer
First Posted 23:30:00 11/22/2009
It is precisely because I disagree that I am elated.
Regardless of the eventual outcome of Ang Ladlad’s petition for accreditation, the decision starts a new era in Philippine constitutional law. We have now entered the discourse of substantive equality of the type that many other countries in the world today confront.
And because Ang Ladlad will be at the center of this development, they have the rare opportunity to craft the law’s development and gain political mileage out of it. They can only thank Nicodemus Ferrer and Co. for this gift.
What the Comelec has done is to sanction, with the use of public authority, prejudice against homosexuals. In constitutional law, this is equivalent to “state action,” which now arms Ang Ladlad with the power to raise the Equal Protection and the Non-Establishment of Religion Clauses in any appropriate domestic and, perhaps, even international forum.
This is no ordinary consequence.
Prior to the Comelec’s decision, prejudice against homosexuals by opinion writers, netizens, religious leaders and ordinary citizens could be considered, as a matter of doctrine, “private discrimination” which, however irrational and hurtful, is not attributable to the state. We can heckle these bigots out of classrooms, newspaper columns or coffee shops all we want, but we cannot go to courts and ask the speakers to stop and apologize.
Given that the Comelec is a public institution, aggrieved parties can now say that because the Constitution recognizes equality and secularism as basic tenets, the corrective organs of the state such as the Supreme Court are obligated to reverse and remedy the grave abuse of discretion committed here. Otherwise, the prejudice of the members of the Comelec will be transformed into official state policy.
Even those less than confident about the capacity of the Supreme Court to correct this constitutional violence should nonetheless rejoice. This is because the decision of the Comelec, by itself, already creates a formal platform for academic and legal discourse.
In the narrow sense, there is now an opportunity for students of the Constitution to talk about discrimination against homosexuals because they have a concrete case to study in class; in the larger sense, this decision opens the door to consciousness-raising of present and future policymakers.
Whereas, before, academics and advocates could only talk about discrimination against homosexuals in a cultural sense, today the Comelec has, by its narrow-mindedness, provided gay rights activists a rallying point that can potentially bring together previously unpoliticized and uncommitted supporters into the debate.
Those who study the history of constitutionalism in these islands will notice that the debate on equality has never really taken on a consciousness-transforming path. We have never had the kind of civil rights movement here of the kind that has legally emancipated blacks and women, even if we experience racism and women are still dis-empowered.
At some point, Congress discriminated against the Chinese to ease their control on the economy, but even today many distinctions on the basis of nationality are constitutionally unproblematic because under a state system citizens can expect more privileges than non-citizens.
The Ang Ladlad case presents a different scenario precisely because the petitioners here are citizens of the republic who have been specifically singled out.
In essence, what the Comelec has done is to declare the entire gay, lesbian, bisexual and transgender community constitutionally invisible and inappropriate subjects of election law.
This not only flies in the face of the policy of the party-list system to let the market of electors decide who they wish to send to Congress; it is also one of the most egregious violations of the principle of republicanism that guarantees citizens the right to participate in government through the vote.
By denying accreditation to Ang Ladlad, the Comelec disqualifies a substantial number of Filipinos from the game of civilized warfare called democracy.
This is fundamentally unfair because, as a group of human beings, they are entitled to seek recognition, meaning and happiness within the confines of a pluralistic constitutional regime.
It is tragic enough that they are sometimes subjected to humiliation by an insensitive society; it is worse when such malevolence is sanctioned by the very state that taxes them.
Florin T. Hilbay teaches constitutional law and legal theory at the UP College of Law and is currently a visiting fellow at the National University of Singapore School of Law.
To continue, God's will be done. The problem is, when the fate of the minority is in the hands of the majority, all too often, God's will is not considered (even though they quote the Bible, Canon Law, The Pope, The Imam...)
Since I am, and have been, for around 40 years an outspoken advocate of Sex-Positive Thinking, people do ask me, "Is there sexual sin? Is everything OK?"
I go out of my way to give an emphatic. "Yes, there is sin, and I repent everyday of my life for my personal experience in that regard. I don't repent because of deserving the fires of hell, but because of the harm and hurt and sadness I have caused those not deserving of such pain.
In the Sunday Inquirer (Nov. 22), Lito Gutierrrez presents a brilliant but quizzical feature. "Leave Manny Alone."
Is this the right queetion? "Did Manny show marital infidelity with Krista at the expense of wife Jinky?" If so, who's asking? Who has the right to ask? Why ask in a newspaper story? Is it because payment is made by the column inch? I don't know.
But look at the article. It seems to say, "See no evit; do no evil," but then the article proceeds to speak a lot of evil about the world's greatest boxer. Did he commit adultery? The article ends, "Leaave Manny Alone. Leave well enough alone."
Why do I say "quizical"? In the whole article the writer leads us into assuming that Manny had sex with Krista. If so, that is is not "well enough..."
Adultery is one of those things that falls into the category of "not good enough." Along with child abuse, using people, or harming another person in any way, verbally, physically, sexually, etc.
The same day, I painfully watched a TV documentary on child abuse by Catholic priests, nuns, and brothers in Catholic orphanages, etc.
Is there sin? There sure is.
Is Manny Paquiau guilty of sin? Just who am I to even ask that question? And i wonder why Gutierrez mulls over the question so belaboredly in an article where he writes of "Cathilic self-righteousness and rank hypocrisy."
Is there sin? Yes, there is sin. Yes, there is self-righteousness. Yes, there is hypocrisy.
Sex-positive theology does not erase, condone, cover over, or play blind to sin.
Sex-positive thinking is positive about the great gift of our loving God -- the great gift of unharmful, unforceful, loving sex.
"God is Friendship." (St. Aelred, 1110-1167)
REV. FR. RICHARD MICKLEY, OSAE, founding PASTOR MCC-MANILA,
founding abbot, The Order of St. Aelred
------------------------------------------------------------
Fr. Richard R. Mickley, O.S.Ae., Ph.D.
Abbot
The Order of St. Aelred
St. Aelred Friendship Society
82-D Masikap Extension
Barangay Central, Quezon City
1100 Metro Manila, Philippines
Landline: 63 2 921 8273
Mobile: 63 920 9034909
E-mail: saintaelred@gmail.com
Website: http://webspace.webring.com/people/ms/saintaelred/index.html
E-group: http://groups.yahoo.com/group/saeffriends
Fr. Richard’s personal blog: http://richardrmickley.blogspot.com
Catholic Diocese of One Spirit (CDOS) website: http://www.onespiritcatholic.org
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