I've got a (religious) feeling...

You know it’s more emotional in the Philippines when people get sent to jail for ‘offending religious feelings.’

MANILA, Philippines - You know it’s more emotional in the Philippines when people get sent to jail for hurting feelings. One might reason that religious feelings are sacred and should therefore be treated with care. Fair enough. In fact, I agree. Respect is a very simple value that for some reason is lost quite often. But that’s the thing. It’s not uncommon. It happens all the time, and there are people who aren’t privileged to be part of the dominant religion and have to deal with irreverent disruptions on a far more regular basis.

Carlos Celdran interrupted an ecumenical event with a sign that said “Damaso.” It looked especially disrespectful until someone on Facebook pointed out that the LGBT community has been dealing with interruptive placards for years. Whenever there is a Pride March, you can be sure that there will be a separate parade of uninvited Christians following them around with big signs that say things like, “God did not make you gay!” or “Karumaldumal na kasalanan!” Sometimes, there’s even somebody preaching to the heathens on a megaphone.

What is sacred?

I was in UP when a friend of mine texted, asking if I could walk with him during his first ever Pride March. They were going around the Academic Oval. When I caught up with them, I found myself on the opposite side of their giant rainbow flag from my friend. It was long enough for the entire parade to hold on to, and as wide as the road. We had to shout a little in order to talk to each other, and I didn’t want to spend the entire parade like that. They paused around the Oblation and laid the flag in a huge U-shape on the ground, surrounding the entire Oblation island. In hindsight it was stupid of me to ask if I could walk over the flag to him, but I did. And he said no. So I whipped my lazy ass and walked around it instead.

As someone who grew up taking for granted that I had the “right” sexuality, I probably will never fully understand the significance of that flag. But the point is, everybody has something that they consider sacred. Everybody has something that they don’t want you to walk over dismissively. Just because your services are silent and solemn, and pride marches involve glitter, colorful costumes, chiseled bodies on floats, and public displays of affection, that doesn’t mean that what they gather to celebrate isn’t important to them.

The LGBT community has a parade of Carlos Celdrans trailing them each and every time they get together to publicly celebrate who they are. And they take it all in stride. They even have their pictures taken next to these “Adam and Eve, not Adam and Steve” placard holders. They get that in a perfect world, everybody would understand the phrase “Walang basagan ng trip.” For now, they just have to roll with the punches. The more fun had with it, the better.

On power and legal overkill

In the face of that, I do not know how the conviction of Celdran can be justified. It reeks of bias in favor of the dominant culture. Sure, people have every right to be offended, to escort human disturbances out of their premises, and know how their practices deserve to be treated. You can’t take on an abrasive approach and expect a smooth and positive “K lang!” reaction. Celdran had it coming. But a lawsuit? Sending someone to jail? That sounds like a spoiled, privileged reaction to the kind of sh*t everybody else is used to dealing with.

Just because some of us don’t have temples and rituals to defile, that doesn’t mean we don’t carry around anything meaningful within ourselves that other people can offend. We do, and we have been offended. But unfortunately being gay or atheist wasn’t uso during the Spanish era when Art. 133 was drafted, so we can’t sue. Not that we would want to. We like to think of ourselves as grown-ups who can handle the haters on our own. It would be so uncool to go into legal overkill over nega comments, no matter how badly timed.             

I would have loved to see Celdran forgiven — not because of the degree of forgivability of his Damaso stunt, the cause behind it, our right to free speech, or because God wants Christians to be spineless. On the contrary, people who find the grace and the magnanimity to forgive are the big ones. They’re the ones who know who they are, what they believe in, and therefore have no need to see anyone go through hell. In fact, they think it’s a waste of time. There is a kind of profound security that is naturally revered. If you need to lock people up to make sure your beliefs are held in high regard, well, the operative word there is “need.” Commanding respect without threatening other people’s freedom is the higher power.

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