Bishop, Catholic Diocese of One Spirit, Philippines
(The following is a slight expansion of the three-minute remarks, requested by the Task Force Pride - TFP, who have been organizers of the Pride March since 1999, and prepared for delivery at the program following the 2010 Pride March, December 4, 2010 on Tomas Morato in Quezon City.
In retrospect this march has been declared the largest in Philippine LGBT Pride March history. The 51 participating organizations are a far cry from the MCC and Pro Gay Sponsors and friends who marched in the rain from EDSA on Quezon Avenue to Quezon Memorial Circle on June 26, 1994.
This year, standing on the well-lit sound stage, I could not see the huge crowd. But when the lights were dimmed for the candle lighting, it seemed like there must have been five thousand out there, united in “One Love,” the theme of this year’s celebration.
In the photo above, you see me on the stage, with Pastors Egay, Ceejay, and Myke standing behind me. If you want to see several hundred more photos of the event, go to my Facebook or become my Facebook friend.
It was good to see so many friends at the Pride March. Many thanks to Chard Ng and Mark Vondraye Simbillo for the wonderful photos from their Facebook albums.)
Ten years from now if someone asks me how I celebrated my 82nd birthday, one of the things I will say is that I walked 3.5 kilometers with 5,000 beautiful people. The city of Quezon city has hosted a fabulous [3.5 kilometers long] parade and well-lighted sound stage for this 16th year after the first Gay and Lesbian Pride March in Asia was held right here in Quezon City.
When I spoke at the first March,
I could never have dreamed that 16 years later so many many of you would be here tonight. I am thrilled. God bless you.
Many gays and lesbians don’t care whether they are kicked out of their church, or not. They are fed up with rejection, with the no, no, no preaching of their church. It’s always NO Masturbation, NO Condoms, NO Same-sex Love.
But some gays and lesbians love their God so much that they want to find a solution.
In 1991, Michael Santos of San Juan did care, and did want to find a solution. He wrote a letter which I got, saying, “I have been kicked out of my church for being gay. When is MCC going to come to the Philippines and help people like me to be at peace with God?”
I left my job as pastor of a thriving MCC LGBT church in New Zealand. I left my salary, my car, my big house, my friends. I came here where I did not know one person.
I began to meet people who told me, “There is not one person helping gay and lesbian Christians in this country. There is no one speaking out publicly to tell them they are OK.”
I set up the first openly gay and lesbian organization in the country, Metropolitan Community Church (MCC), and began to preach the message in church and on television and through the newspapers and magazines – that God loves Gay and lesbian people unconditionally.
Then they asked, “If that is true, why can’t we have weddings like everybody else can?” So I started having weddings for same-sex couples. Now there are three pastors also offering Holy Unions.
Then I had a debate on TV with a popular Catholic bishop, and he said the Bible condemns gay and lesbian love-making. I told him there is not one word, one verse, or one story in the entire Bible which condemns our love. Then I developed a four-hour seminar to prove that the Bible does not condemn our love.
One day a lesbian said to me, “My church says that the Bible does not like women who love women.” I told her, “My dear, that is not true. One whole book of the Bible is about the love story of two women, Ruth and Naomi, the book of Ruth.”
Her gay friend was standing beside her and he asked, “But what about men loving men?” I told him there are some beautiful stories about men who loved men in the Bible. The great King David, who wrote the prayer book of Jesus, after he killed the giant Goliath, fell in love with Jonathan, the son of King Saul, and their beautiful love story is told in the Bible.
And, yes, even Jesus had a lover. Eight times the Bible tells us that there was one special one who was called the beloved of Jesus, the beloved disciple who was allowed to cuddle with Jesus, lie with his head on the heart of Jesus. That’s not the Da Vinci Code; that’s not a novel or fiction; that’s the Bible. And who did Jesus turn his mother over to when he was dying on the cross? He gave his mother over to the care of his lover, John, the beloved disciple. Imagine that! So, I told the gay friend of my lesbian friend, “So you see, the Bible is not against same-sex love. It’s the bishops of the church who reject us.”
They teach sex-negative theology. In contrast, I have developed three courses in Sex-Positive Theology. They deal in detail with all these things about spirituality and sexuality. They are available free of charge by email (saintaelred@gmail.com)
And you know what? The Filipino people are beginning to realize that what the bishops say about these matters is not necessarily what God says about these issues.
Today 85% of Filipinos may be Catholic, but 69% of them disagree with their bishops. 69% favor the Reproductive Health (RH) Bill.
Of course we know that morality is not determined by the majority. We also know that it’s true that 69%, at least, disagree with the NO, NO, NO teachings of the bishops.
Then people kept on talking to me. “I went to confession,” the gay guy said. “The priest got real mad at me when I told him I masturbated.”
Then another gay guy, his friend, said, “That’s nothing. You should have heard what the priest said when I told him I was having sex with my boy friend.”
Everywhere I went I heard stories like that. But in church and out of church I told them that in MCC, we know that LGBT people can be Christian. And thousands are.
The Rev. Troy Perry brought that message to the world when he founded MCC in 1968, a year before the Stonewall Riots. And I brought MCC and that message to the Philippines in 1991.
The church still says NO, NO, NO. But thank goodness the pope now permits male prostitutes to use condoms to prevent AIDS. Praise the Lord! That means male prostitutes are OK. If you are a call boy, rejoice, the pope says you are OK.
Yesterday my call boy friend asked me, “What about all those condom sins I committed before the pope said it was OK? Were they sins?”
I answered, “My dear, they were not sins in the first place. It’s just that the church is very slow in catching up with modern science and modern psychology and real people in today’s real world.”
Ladies and gentlemen, there is only one Truth. God’s truth — and the truth is that God loves you.
In 1994 when MCC and Pro Gay with Oscar Atadero co-sponsored the first Pride March in Asia, somebody said, “We have a human right to our sexuality and a human right to our spirituality.”
[In the photo below, taken at the first Pride March in the Philippines and in Asia in 1994, Oscar is shown top left among the MCC participants.]
Today the Pride March, LGBT Pride, includes the right to love God and our lover according to our conscience – Catholic, Protestant, Moslem, atheist or whatever. We have a right not to be denied our spiritual rights.
I told my friend, “You know, MCC in Makati (Pastor Egay), MCC in QC (Pastor Ceejay), MCC in Baguio (Pastor Myke) [pointing to the three pastors standing behind me on the stage] just keep on telling people all about that. God is love. YES, YES, YES Love your neighbor, love your lover, love God. Love, love, love. It’s all about love.”
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