Justice Isagani Cruz And Homophobia
Justice Isagani Cruz's article "Don We Now Our Gay Apparel" has been marked homophobic by just about every homosexual I know, for good reason. He implies that gays should be beaten up and treated like scum. He basically went against popular gay-rights activism by sticking to his conservative guns and treating them as psychogical nutcases, neurotics who have this abnormal condition called homosexuality.
First of all, I am not going to demonize him. Not that I believe him, mind you: I honestly think that all human life deserves respect. However, let's set the record straight on a couple of issues:
1) Regarding gay marriage, I honestly don't want it legalized. Marriage is the first step to making a family, and two men simply can't start one. Adoption might be an option, but I do believe that mothers are irreplacable even by the kindest gay parent.
2) With regards allowing gays to participate in the Santa Cruz de Mayo, I really think they should not. It's a Marian ceremony, thus ony the finest females should be allowed to participate in it. Whatever it is you think about Marian Devotion, be it a new form of goddess worship or not (which it is not), I leave that to you. But the same way women should not perform Jesus' role in a Sarswela, Men (including gays) should not dress up like Mary.
3) Cruz's anger seems directed at practicing homosexuals. When he mentioned that he did not dislike all gays, he (to this reader) implied an acceptance of effeminate males who in spite of their effeminate behavior, are still heterosexual by preference, or do not engage in man-to-man sex. In this sense he bascally echoes the fundamental Church stand on the issue. Being effemnate, and having homosexual leanings is ok as long as not practiced (which explains the ordination of effeminate priests).
Be that as it may, he still failed to define his boundaries in this accord. He simply said he was fine with gays who displayed proper decorum--whatever the hell that is by his standards. Personally, I am a very staunch Catholic, and hence I follow the principle of "it's ok to be effeminate, but don't do it with guys." But, (and this is very important), I do not condemn nor discriminate against homosexuals, simply because I'm just as human as they are, I have my own sins to worry about, and I don't know of their circumstances. Besides, there's no doubting the fact that they are among the most creative people in the world, and having artistic aspirations as well, I can never hate an artistic people.
Basically, Cruz failed to make his work palatable enough for his audience. He made it too forceful it came off as brash and arrogant. It was so forceful he came off as a long rant. And his paper is essentially one long hasty generalization, a ong opinion presented as fact.
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Now, Manolo Quezon III's rebuttal "The Grand Inquisitor" is no better made. It is in a word, fallacious. He commits so many fallacies it is unforgivable:
"Hate the sin but love the sinner?"
- Yes, sinners aren't defined by their sins. Obviously he is unfamiliar with the theological ideas of agent and action. People, being made in God's image, are inherently lovable and impossible to hate. they aren't sin, but possible agents of it. Sin is an act, the act does not equal the actor. People can do crazy things that don't define who they really are. Every teacher knows that the unruly kid in the front row may simply be misunderstood, not evil. But if his unruliness is indicative of his true character, then he'd be evil--which is not true.
As for his question "possible debate on what is sin," sin is any act that is wilfully committed, and in violation of the principles of "verum, bonum, et pulcrhum," truth, beneficence, and metaphysical beauty. As to what those are, read your Aquinas and Aristotle.
"The result is the perversion of the finer instincts of religion..."
Cruz only implied religion as a reference to the perversion of the Santa Cruz de Mayo. Nowhere else did he mention any other religious references. Where did this come from?
"Christ was friend to prostitutes and tax collectors, and He debated even with the devil. Must Christianity end with Christ?"
-He debated with the devil, not befriend nor tolerate him. Christ actively spoke out against societal wrongs such as hypocrisy and proto-simony in his Father's Temple. He did not so much "befriend" the devil by engaging him in a debate, He blammed Satan's temptations. That is not a debate but a one-sided fight between God's Son and Satan.
"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."
- Problematic, because to the conservatives, homosexuality IS the total repudiation of the self, and coming out of the closet is considered a surrender to weakness. Coming out is not an act of liberty, but submission to base desire. Now, dont call me a homophobe--I understand it's not that simple, and honestly I hate arguing from the liberty standpoint. My point is, Quezon attacked Cruz from the wrong context. Hit the enemy where he is, not where he isn't.
"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 fail to see where Cruz said this. From Cruz's context, again, homosexuality is enslavement, hypocrisy and cowardice. If anything, he eve comes off as a savior--from a super-conservative outlook. This is yet another case of clashing contexts.
"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?"
-Cruz never said any of these. Implied maybe, but even that is debatable.
"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."
-And there goes the last remaining chance there may have been to sort out this mess. Dialogue can be very helpful, lest we have an Israel versus The Middle East within The Inquirer's columnists.
"...that he defames religion by turning it into an ideology of hate..."
-Cruz never did this--he did not use religion in his arguments but used chauvinism instead. Religion never then was presented as a tool of hate.
"The nonconformist is a subversive. Subversion and rebellion make societies become more generous, more diverse, more compassionate—and an individual more free."
-Not always. Want proof? Singapore. China. Saudi Arabia. These countries pursue subversives with iron gauntlets. But their citizens are hardly what one would call "less free." If anything they can be so nationalistic they've never been more free.
"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."
-Noted. I'll respect this.
"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."
-The day Auschwitz is reopened for gays, gulags are established for lesbians, and red purges are led against both, then and only then must Nazism, Mao, and Stalin be associated with homophobia. The analogy is flawed.
"Society is all the better for the increased prominence of gays."
-Proof please.
That said, both articles are of odious quality. Quezon came off as too "emo"while Cruz came off as arrogant. With mindsets like both--both hardly thinking with their minds but their hearts, no real intellectual discourse is possible.
posted by Frozen Twilight @ 11:43 PM
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