In Retrospect

It did not come quick
It was a drawn-out process
Of agonized waiting
Of disorienting doubt and confusion

No, the light of hope
Did not burn bright or clear
It flickered and flashed
Before ultimately dying out

The resulting freedom
An opportunity to shine
Does not explain its necessity
It’s a truth I’ve never,
And cannot, accept

GPL 9/7/11

Flight of Fancy

Initial excitement
seeming animation
Suspended, in wonder
Fleeting, floating
In a flight of fancy
As the clouds
Outside my window

Drink in hand
Feet up, and a pillowed back
Comfort and service
fit for a king
suspiciously pandering treatment
one should have known
better

the richness of the offerings
the abundance
of graces bestowed
must be appreciated with
much gratitude
as a condemned prisoner
walking his last

For the lost taste
Merely lends to blandness
And the unaffordable
Luxury
Is ultimately seen
As without sense or meaning…

GPL 9/6/11

Of Pilgrimages and Prayers

During a chance visit to a high school last year, I came upon a bulletin board displaying some favourite pilgrimage sites for the Virgin Mary in the country. Among these were Our Lady of Manaoag in Pangasinan, Our Lady of Piat in Cagayan Valley, Our Lady of Penafrancia in Naga City, Our Lady of Namacpacan in La Union, and Our Lady of Antipolo in Rizal.

The Lady in Manaoag is one of the most famous and thus, most visited among them. Second only to it is Our Lady of Penafrancia which has its own share of crowds every September. Their popularity is based on their supposed tradition of miracles and the power to grant petitions. And their counterparts are no less than miraculous. Our Lady of Antipolo is actually also known as the Lady of Good Voyages, and travellers, especially overseas contract workers, visit her for safe journeys. Our Lady of Piat is originally from Lallo, Cagayan and her image was said to have saved the people from a great flood when the Cagayan River overflowed. It is also one of those rare “black” virgins because there is a dark-skinned version of her in honor of the ethnic Itawis tribe that populate the region along with Ibanags and Ilocanos. Our Lady of Namacpacan, on the other hand, is exactly what her namesake means in the Ilocano dialect – her miracle was having “fed” the people during a time of famine and drought. To this day, her chapel has a deep well where people draw miraculous water which is said to heal ailments.

I realized I was fortunate to have been able to visit all of them, some them more than once. It has always been my practice to visit pilgrimage sites whenever I travel. Besides sampling the local cuisine and learning about the folklores of the place, I usually make it a point to include religious sites part of my tourist itinerary. Maybe I owe it to my religious mother or my Catholic upbringing, but somehow this makes my trips special. It is part honouring the place, part marvelling at the church architecture if it happens to be an old structure as well, and part “self-interest”. Self interest because if it’s my first time in a church, I know I’m supposed to get three wishes. This becomes all the more significant if I have my own petition or special intentions for something really important to me.

To be honest, my belief in these was strengthened when I was a Bar reviewee and like the rest of aspiring lawyers, I was one of those who trekked to Manaoag, Antipolo, St. Jude near Malacanang, Sta. Clara along Aurora Blvd., Quiapo church and Baclaran. Looking back now, I think part of these rituals is “conditioning“ one’s body and soul. It’s when you discover that not all things are within your control, especially when you’ve done everything humanly possible already. It’s when you finally accept that there are greater powers at work besides your “genius brain and egotistical nature”. It’s when you ultimately succumb to prayers because hey, saying a few could never hurt your chances.

Going Sectoral: Learning from the Seniors

Of late, there is so much talk about sectoral concerns. Probably because our own Constitution identifies them explicitly for political representation in Congress because they have been recognized as “ marginalized”, or maybe because our national human rights framework was geared towards protecting these identified sectors as a “priority” for years, especially if they already have their own United Nations Convention.

The elderly community is one such sector, and although they are sometimes lumped together with Persons with Disabilities (PWDs), they have certainly come a long way compared to others. Like women and children, there was specific mention about them in the Philippine Constitution – something about recognizing their contributions to society, etc.etc. As such, senior citizens also have several legislations to their name that provide them specific benefits and privileges. But unlike women and children, said laws bestow unto them certain “advantages”, more than “preferential treatment” rather than “protectionist”. Maybe that is why the original Magna Carta of Senior Citizens was more about discounts on purchases, than addressing neglect or abuse committed against them.

But what makes the senior citizens sector “special” is how they manage to get things done and to achieve things that run in their favour. Note that while women have the Philippine Commission on Women (formerly known as the NCRFW or National Commission on the Role of the Filipino Women), children have the Council for the Welfare of Children (CWC) and the youth, the National Youth Commission (NYC), the PWDs have the National Council on Disability Affairs (NCDA) or what was formerly known as NCWDP. Senior citizens do not have any agency, council or commission. All they have is an inter-agency National Coordinating and Monitoring Board (NCMB) chaired by the DSWD and focused on monitoring the implementation of the senior citizens act.

Note also that older persons do not have their own treaty or UN Convention unlike other sectors. Children have the Convention on the Rights of the Child (CRC) while women have the Convention on the Elimination of all Forms of Discrimination against Women (CEDAW). PWDs have the UNCRPD or the UN Convention on the Rights of Persons with Disabilities, while migrant workers have the UN Convention of the Migrant Workers Rights. The only international instruments “of stature” that seniors can use are the Macau Plan of Action, the Madrid Programme of Action, and the Shanghai Implementation Strategy, plus a few proceedings of World Assemblies on Ageing.

But since the early 1990s, senior citizens have managed to organize themselves nationwide. With initial help from DSWD, the Federation of Senior Citizens Associations of the Philippines (FSCAP) was established with a national membership and representation from all the regions. From the most basic political unit in the barangay, to municipalities or cities, to the provincial level, up to the regional federation president, they were able to build up their ranks from the grassroots up to the national level. It was this very same mechanism that got them organized enough to apply for partylist accreditation and achieve that 10% of electoral votes enough for sectoral representation in Congress. For the PWD sector and the LGBT Community seeking to run under the partylist system, there is a clear lesson to be learned here. Get organized as a true sector and not just as a hodge-podge community of “marginalized” individuals; and make sure you are able to reach all regions and provinces to harness that nationwide membership, come campaign period and most importantly, election day.

We must get our act together first, get unified and work to achieve a common goal. Senior citizens have repeatedly shown their highly effective legislative advocacy and lobbying work. In a span of almost two decades, they have managed a third amendment to their senior citizens act and which now provides for even more additional benefits and privileges. Meanwhile, the Anti-Discrimination bill that seeks to protect Filipino LGBTs has languished in the halls of legislature for the past three Congresses or over nine years!

With all these things working out positively for senior citizens, I guess they do know something we don’t…because they seem to be doing everything right.

Lessons (for the young and the old)

I once told a friend working on child rights that I envied him for being regularly exposed to the energy and idealism of the youth. I believed it was that kind of positivity that was needed in our advocacy work. It envigorates any veteran activist on the brink of burn-out. He answered that he envied me too, because working with, and for, the elderly also had its advantages. I get to benefit from their wisdom and years of experience from which I can learn a great deal. And he may have a point there.

I have been working on senior citizens concerns for four years now, and admittedly, while dealing with the elderly can sometimes try one’s patience, I have found it quite rewarding too. Firstly, I learned that besides patience, our elderly just want someone to truly listen to them. In exchange, they listen to what you’re trying to say too. Besides true communication, I learned from my beloved senior citizens the power of gratitude and appreciation. It must be their generation of exacting “politeness”, but when they are pleased with your efforts at addressing their concern, they never lack for “thank you’s” and “we really appreciate it”. Maybe because of all they’ve seen and experienced, I think they truly know by now what is important in life and that is what they put a premium on. You can sense it in the way they are respectful of authority, the way they value family and friends, and the way they deal with problems or conflicts…even the way they enjoy everyday experiences.

Unfortunately, we don’t have the luxury of knowing what the elderly know, especially the youth. Young people are sometimes too much in a hurry to grow up, so they fail to enjoy their childhood, their freedom from responsibility, their only chance at making mistakes. As busy adults, we waste so much time on pursuits that we think will give us the most material gain; never realizing that whatever we accumulate in this mundane life, we can’t take with us when we die.

With the success of the senior citizens in getting sectoral representation in Congress, lobbying for and getting laws passed for their benefit, and having nationwide membership in senior citizens federations and associations, I’d say advocacy groups and aspiring party lists can learn a thing or two from our seniors.

ILGA in the ECOSOC; Phils Abstained

With 30 votes in favour (India, Italy, Japan, Latvia, Malta, Mexico, Mongolia, Nicaragua, Norway, Peru, Republic of Korea, Slovakia, Spain, Switzerland, Ukraine, United Kingdom, United States, Venezuela, Argentina, Australia, Belgium, Canada, Chile, Ecuador, Estonia, Finland, France, Germany, Hungary), 13 against (Iraq, Morocco, Namibia, Pakistan, Qatar, Russia, Saudi Arabia, Senegal, Bangladesh, Cameroon, China, Egypt, Ghana) and 6 abstentions (Guatemala, Mauritius, Philipines, Rwanda, Bahamas, Ivory Coast), the UN Economic and Social Council (ECOSOC) granted today consultative status to the International Lesbian, Gay, Bisexual, Trans and Intersex Association (ILGA). ECOSOC consultative status allows NGOs to attend UN conferences and meetings, submit written statements and reports, make oral interventions, and host panels in UN buildings, thus representing a fundamental tool for an NGO like ILGA – with more than 750 member organisations in all continents – to do work on LGBTI human rights within the UN system.

ILGA was the first international LGBTI organisation to get ECOSOC consultative status in 1993, but lost it the following year due to the presence of groups advocating the abolition of laws of consent. ILGA has applied to regain the status ever since, following the expulsion of the above mentioned groups from its membership and after amending its constitution to state clearly its commitment against child abuse, but a small group of countries sponsoring homophobia had been able to influence the votes in the UN NGO Committee examining the applications for a long time. In the meantime, many ILGA members – like LBL Denmark, COC The Netherlands, FELGT Spain, LSVD Germany, ABGLT Brazil, IGLHRC US, and Ilga-Europe – were able to obtain the status by having the negative recommendation of the NGO Committee overturned in the ECOSOC Council, as it has happened in the case of ILGA today.

A special thanks goes to Belgium, for its relentless efforts in building a consensus around us, together with the United States and Argentina. We would like to thank also our member organisations which successfully lobbied their Governments on this occasion and all our allies for their support, in particular Arc-International in Geneva."

"Today we are celebrating – said co-Secretary General Gloria Careaga from Mexico City – but we are aware that there is a lot of work to do for us in the coming months. We are looking forward to working together with all our members, particularly those which also have the status, and our allies to advance LGBTI human rights in the UN bodies in the coming years, taking advantage of the very positive developments opened by the resolution presented by South Africa in the UN Human Rights Council last June."

Pedro Paradiso Sottile, Regional Secretary for ILGA LAC (Latin America and the Caribbean), also in Geneva for the occasion, said: "Granting ILGA consultative status is an act of justice and a reason for pride for the international community working for a world where human rights are truly respected without any discrimination. Our voices and our struggle for equality and freedom must reach every corner of the world, for differences in sexual orientation, gender identity and expression to be respected and protected by all States. We believe that the ECOSOC status will help all our activists around the world in this endeavour.”

Hits and Misses: The Real Issues behind LGBT News

A few days ago, a colleague in the civil society movement congratulated me for all the media exposure the LGBT Community was getting. He said TV and print media not only “picked up” on our LGBT news, but we were able to “sustain” it on air for quite some time. For someone who worked on migrant workers rights, he certainly knows what he’s talking about; because even for them, whose issues should’ve been constant fodder for the news, it is still quite hard to get media coverage sometimes.

Once upon a time, I would have believed the saying too; that whether it’s good or bad publicity, it’s STILL publicity, after all. But as we have learned throughout the years, sometimes media can be so “irresponsible” as to hype up and make so controversial such a small thing. In addition, “traditional” media would not even attempt to be politically correct and even reinforce negative stereotypes about LGBTs because that is “what sells”.

In the past weeks, features on Boy Abunda’s public support for Ladlad, the spate of gay killings now being documented by the Philippine Hate Crime Watch led by Marlon and Reighben, and the Baguio Pride celebration of a mass same-sex wedding got so much media mileage. For my part, with a human interest story on Rated K and the development in New York allowing same-sex marriage, I was also given my 15 minutes of fame for the last weekend of June.

As Vice-Chairperson of Ladlad, I know first-hand about all the difficulties we went through campaigning for Ladlad in the past elections. Tito Boy coming out to support the Filipino LGBT Community through Ladlad LGBT Partylist was probably one of the best things that came out of our “loss”. Besides using his own popularity to give Ladlad the exposure it needs through his own TV shows, he has been providing us the necessary resources to do the groundwork early for 2013, like providing us an office/headquarters and donating the proceeds of one of his endorsements. What more, his coming out in the open and serving as Ladlad’s Senior Adviser, has given us more credibility as a legitimate sector entitled to representation in Congress, and other LGBTs around the country now know about Ladlad and are willing to support us as well.

Once or twice, Tito Boy has spoken about other LGBT issues too, like the gay killings for example. For many years, murders of gays have been reported, but there has never been sufficient attention given to it by authorities. Police were always dismissive of these cases and categorized them as “robberies gone wrong” or engagements with male sex workers (call boys) which led to “misunderstandings about the rate of services.” Families were known to avoid any focus on their kin’s homosexuality because of embarrassment, and this attitude leads to cases not being pursued. Police also discontinue their investigations and leave these murders unresolved. For the LGBT Community, this issue has been the major consideration for a proposed “hate crime” bill similar to what are being passed in the USA.

After the initial forum conducted at the Metropolitan Community Church-Quezon City, where Marlon presented his initial inventory, Rainbow Rights Project and Ladlad sponsored a special human rights violations documentation training at ISIS International as a follow-up activity. QTV 11’s Brigada featured gay killings in one of their episodes, while Philippine Graphic magazine also released a special issue on the subject matter. This even prompted Anti-Discrimination bill sponsor Rep. Teddy Casino to also pass a resolution in Congress to investigate such cases of violence against Filipino LGBTs.

Meanwhile, as part of their annual June Pride celebrations, Baguio Pride Network in cooperation with the different resident pastors of the Metropolitan Community Church (MCC) held a mass gay wedding for eight same-sex couples in Baguio City. Obviously, this exercise was meant to bring to light just one other issue of Filipino LGBTs, the societal recognition and acceptance of their partnerships as legitimate and valid couplings entitled to respect and legal protection.

It was a happy surprise that it got front page exposure in a broadsheet, but since Baguio City is notorious for its rather “vocal” clergy, the bishops overreacted again calling it immoral and “kadiri”. But what is more embarrassing for Baguio City besides revealing itself as an Anti-LGBT locality, was the fact that city officials and councillors likewise joined the bandwagon of negativity and started calling it “illegal” and that they will pass a resolution “banning” such activity in the future. There were even threats of censuring all the MCC pastors who officiated the said weddings.

They totally missed the point. While the activity clearly had some very serious reasons behind it, as the original intention of all those who participated in it, this event was also a “gimmick” of sorts. Maybe the local officials had “no sense of humor” about it, or the media was just being “helpful” for exposing it, but the message was sadly lost in all the controversy.

Rev.Ceejay was forced to answer the issues of illegality and immorality in all his interviews as a seeming knee-jerk reaction to the city officials’ and bishops’ homophobic and discriminatory statements. Time and again, he had to tackle the rather “irrelevant at this point” questions about the way LGBTs are and if we can still change and become straights.

As I said during my own interviews, people cannot say they accept us as LGBTs and yet deny us the right to love someone and take him/her as our life partner. It is not enough that they acknowledge us as LGBT individuals because who we actually love, and that is a person of the same sex, is the single important aspect that defines us. So the Catholic Church statement of “love the sinner and hate the sin”, which “accepts” us as LGBT people but prohibits us from “practicing such a lifestyle”, just wouldn’t work. It is our same-sex relationships that comprises our most unique self-expression of gender and sexuality.

With the bishops spouting cries of ”immorality” once again, they seem not to get it through their thick skulls that nobody really cares about them imposing their Catholic self-righteousness on every Filipino, what with sexual harassment and child abuse cases within their ranks. Not every Filipino is Catholic after all, so they cannot claim to be the vanguards of morality for the whole country. Besides, there is also such a principle as “separation of State and Church” in our Constitution which they seem to have a penchant for violating. Talk about violating the laws of the land!

As for the alleged “illegality” of the same-sex wedding, nobody claimed it was “legal” after all. The pastors and the couples present there were all aware the ceremony would have no legal consequences whatsoever and never made representations to the contrary. The Holy Union wouldn’t need to be registered with the local civil registrar or NSO, and no one would get to change their civil status or legal surnames. But these couples were still willing to do their commitment ceremony publicly for the acknowledgement of their family and friends even if the greater majority of society doesn’t appreciate it. This was the real message that was the meant for the media to make noise about - why same-sex partners want their relationships recognized and respected so badly.

But hope springs eternal. Philippine media can still prove itself a supportive ally of the Filipino LGBT Community.