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Archive for the ‘LGBT’ Category

Thank you for the letters. The response to the article made me realize that a 3,000-character piece on coming out could never encompass the space and stories inside the closet – the agony/ecstasy of desire, unrequited love (and how, as a friend once told me, we latch on it as if that’s the only meaningful and acceptable love), and the occasional sneaking out, slip ups, that make us nervous, that make us laugh.

Some of you have confessed of the hardship of coming out. One reader told me that he never succumbed to the temptations of gay sex, and now that he’s 66 years old, he has decided to just let things be, and focus on taking care of his 96-year old mother. Some closets are made for forever, and we cannot pass judgement on why others can come out while some can’t. Some letters expressed hopefulness, a solidarity of sort, a wish that one day others could also make the leap. Read the rest of this entry »

Just sharing a coming out article I wrote for the PDI’s Sunday Inquirer Magazine.

First Person: Smashing Closets, Opening Doors

I WAS a little brash when I came out. It happened in 1998, on my last year in UP Diliman, when I was madly in love with another gay man. It was unrequited, but love made it easier to smash the closet: I simply dropped the news to my college friends, then attended my first Pride March, and even managed to blurt out “Oh by the way, I am gay” during my talk for freshman orientation.

Coming out, I was euphoric and had complete disregard for what others would think. That year, I brought my first lover to a family reunion. We were discreet, and thought that nobody noticed. Nobody did, actually, except for one lola who, months later, showed the reunion pictures to my parents and said, “Yan ang boyfriend ng anak n’yo! (That’s your son’s boyfriend!)” Read the rest of this entry »

From Section 10 it became Section 2.7. And so finally that morning, after a long delay, we found ourselves right in the middle of the Bureaucracy, going over a Memorandum of Agreement (“henceforth referred to as MOA”), some preambulatory clauses, pertinent provisions, and a litany of technical terms.

I was with E. and N., leaders of an organization of Filipinos with HIV/AIDS (PLWHAs) that has been providing support to positive Pinoys. They were about to lose their office this year due to lack of funding, and since 2006 they’ve been trying to get the Department of Health to provide a little office space in one of its facilities for free. Their appeal went through a complete bureaucratic life cycle – it was approved in principle, was referred to several public health agencies and facilities, was suddenly denied, and was being re-considered. When Akbayan heard of the case, we brought it up in a congressional hearing, finally compelling the Department of Health to see if there’s a spare room that the organization could use. It was decided that a hospital in Manila would host the organization for the meantime.

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Here’s an article I wrote for Sunday Magazine of the Philippine Daily Inquirer. Since I haven’t posted anything for the last two weeks (?), I thought I’d just share this article. Many thanks to jaefever and her mom for facilitating this opportunity.

Gay, Pregnant and Marked for Harassment
By Jonas Bagas
Philippine Daily Inquirer

MANILA, Philippines – Remember the “flower platoon”?

Back when the Reserve Officers Training Course (ROTC) was still mandatory for male college students, it symbolized discrimination against gay students. Real men marched in real platoons; gay students were with their pansy fellows in the flower platoon. Their only duty was to cheer for their manly counterparts or run errands for them.

Well, the “flower platoon” disappeared with the abolition of compulsory ROTC in 2001, but the underlying biases that created it still persist. They come in the form of unwritten rules or the ubiquitous “morality clause” in the student manual. They are meant to crack the whip on what some sectors still describe as “moral deviants”—lesbians, gays, bisexuals and transgenders (LGBT), as well as unmarried pregnant students. Read the rest of this entry »

Yes, it has been languishing in Congress since 1999, and yes, we’re still pushing for it. It ain’t over until it has been passed into law.

The Anti-discrimination bill, filed this term as HB 956 by AKBAYAN Rep. Risa Hontiveros-Baraquel, seeks to prohibit a wide-range of discriminatory policies and practices against Filipino lesbians, gays, bisexuals and transgenders (LGBTs). Homophobic groups and politicians (Remember that idiot, Rep. Abante?) have used various tactics to block the bill, from scaring people that the bill is about same-sex marriage – which is patently untrue – to misleading people that it is not needed. What with these media-instigated raids in gay bars taking place, or gay men being victimized by hate crimes, and presumably gay sons or lesbian daughters being beaten up by their parents, i seriously wonder where they got the notion that we don’t need a law against discrimination?!?

Anyway, blame Cardinal Rosales for this entry on the Anti-Discrimination Bill. He recently said that gay men should be banned from Sagalas, a statement that clearly attacks our tradition. Even before the LGBT started organizing the annual Pride March, gay men were already parading in Sagalas, as Reyna Emperatriz or Reyna Elena, as giggling sakristans, or as closeted priests. The gay community has always been part of that tradition.

After Cardinal Rosales imposed the ban, a group of gay men thought of organizing a Sagala in Quezon City exclusively for homosexuals. We’ll be there, distributing fliers on the Anti-Discrimination Bill, on safer sex, and yes, we’ll be distributing condoms, too. There goes tradition, Cardinal Rosales.

PS. Contrary to news reports, I am not a Marian devotee. (I can almost hear ‘em shouting, “Burn, Bagas, Burn!”)
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Monsignor Achilles Dakay of the Archdiocese of Cebu blames ‘gay sex’ as the real culprit behind the so-called Cebu rectal surgery scandal. All I can say to Father Dakay is this: Father, there’s a whole world of gay sex taking place in your parish, perhaps even within your parish church. All you have to do is open your eyes. Where else did those erotic fantasies about priests and sacristans come from?

I wonder, after calling gay sex unnatural and perverse, what does ‘gay sex’ conjure in the mind of Father Dakay? Does the idea of oral sex between men evoke images of Dementors? Does he believe that we are all predisposed to get motel rooms that are, by some evil design, all numbered 666? It would probably surprise our dear Father Dakay to discover that when we have sex on the floor, we don’t do it inside a huge drawing of the pentagram, surrounded by candles. We don’t do a Linda Blair or an Emily Rose when we cum either; when that happens, please be assured, Father Dakay, that I’d be the first to request for an exorcism. Read the rest of this entry »

Today, I woke up with a persistent buzz inside my head. I knew immediately that a shift in my world happened, a not-so subtle change. It was not in the morning news but I noticed even before rising that the pillows on my bed were into something, trading rumors in whispers.

While having my breakfast, the bowl I took from the shelf stared back with a malicious smirk on its face. My oatmeal giggled as i poured milk on it – or was it just the buzz in my head? Poets have claimed that rivers sing, but I swear today it was the faucet that I heard, teasing the sink with its sexy humming. Even the electric fan nodded its agreement: today I woke up with a psychedelic buzz inside my head.

Outside, while walking to my office, a jogger leaped, landed in India, and discovered that butterflies and lovers are of the same origin. The traffic light dismantled itself and discarded its lights, replacing them with images of vast sunsets. The alley cats declared their sovereignty, walked on walls, and marched for the moon. The newsboy sold tabloids that screamed poetry in red. To settle things the sun itself issued a ruling, final and executory: love cannot be denied.

As a man of reason, I chose to ignore it all. I walked past the cheering crowd that greeted the decision. The clouds declared a holiday and turned themselves into wings; I skipped their celebration. I went straight to my office instead, poured myself a cup of coffee. Its blackness was defiantly bitter. I drank it anyway, bottoms up. It was only then, in the stillness of the room, that the buzz in my head unravelled its syllables: all along it was saying your name, your name, your name.

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