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By Dulce Arguelles
and Darwin Amojelar
Ben Fernandez, 72, is one of the oldest
residents of the home for aging gays and lesbians built by former
Pasay City councilor Justo Justo.
His life is a continuing struggle against a
society that still does not accept anyone outside the norm.
“My brother did not want me to be gay.
He even threw a knife at me, but I was able to dodge it. They
(siblings) even told my mother that I have had many men and that I
had syphilis. Even if they fight with me, I still love
them,” Ben, who prefers to be called Deborah, says.
He used to earn a lot of money when he was a
make-up artist in the 1970s. He has since fallen on hard
times, and has difficulty trying to make ends meet with the
occasional piano lessons he gives students.
Ben’s advice to younger gays: “You should
study harder and follow whatever your parents tell you, so that you
will respected by other people. If you are with your gay friends you
should act properly so that you they will respect you. Save money
and always think of your family first. If you love the person tell
him, so that if he says no, at least you know.”
He has been in Justo’s home since 1987.
Justo himself bears witness to the
discrimination suffered by gays and lesbians. He has given
aging gays and lesbians a home, and a place of refuge when things
get rough.
Many of the elderly wards he sent to homes for
the aged were sent back unceremoniously because the officials found
they were gay or lesbian and didn’t want them, he recalls.
Double standards
Ryan, is a 19-year-old salesman, recently
graduated from high school.
“I needed money to support my family and to
continue my study. So I looked for a job. I pretended to be straight
and was accepted,” he says.
He had a crush on an officemate at the office
where he used to work.
“He was tall, cute and had beautiful eyes.
One night we had chance to talk. I told him I never had sex with a
girl. I asked him what it was like.
“He told me that he also hadn’t. I
told him ‘I think that I might be gay, but I’m not so sure.’
And I asked him if he was gay also. He told me that he wasn’t
sure.
“The next day when I reported to the office,
Jeff had told everyone that I was gay. I become the talk of the
town.
“Stories started going around about me
attacking co-workers in the restroom, or that I had tried to touch a
co-worker’s dick. Co-workers started to refuse to work with me.
Even the management started to hate me because of the problems they
had to deal with. I decided to resign because I don’t want people
gossiping and hating me just because I’m gay,” Ryan says.
Kay, a gay who likes to wear feminine clothing,
is a college graduate. While he used to hope that someone
would hire him for his qualifications — he has a degree in
management — 80 rejections from 80 companies convinced him that he
has no place in the corporate world.
A question of money
Dave, on the other hand, decided to be
practical. He reserves his feminine clothing for weekend
dates, and goes to work in male attire. He works in a bank as
a middle-level manager. His company frowns on gays and he has
not told anyone about his “secret.”
“I enjoy a high salary. So what if I
have to hide? Better to hide than to scrounge for money
working in a beauty parlor,” he retorts.
Lizzy, a femme lesbian who works in a company
that manufactures clothing, agrees. People think she is
straight because of the sexy, feminine clothing she wears.
“I’m not going to sacrifice my life for some
cause. Will the cause feed my family?” she asserts.
Dave and Lizzy are among the breed of gays and
lesbians who “manage to combine the conflicting requirements of
society and personal desire,” according to Romeo Lee, a behavioral
science professor from De La Salle University.
“The images of lesbians and gay men are moving
away from the traditional effeminate, traditional butch. More
and more traditional images will be overshadowed. We will look
upon them as part of the mainstream, but their lifestyles are still
different,” Lee said.
Gays and lesbians who attain material success or
political power are somehow exempt from discrimination.
“Even if we don’t accept people, once they
have acquired material success, discrimination disappears,” Lee
notes.
Religion and homosexuality
The modern mindset in the Catholic church is to
hate the sin but love the sinner as long as homosexuals do not
“act out” their homosexuality or have relationships with the
same sex.
But according to Fr. Richard R. Mickley, a
priest of the Order of St. Aelred, “there’s no word, no verse,
no story anywhere in the Bible which condemns homosexual
orientation, gay and lesbian love, or same-sex marriage.”
Mickley adds that “God gives us sex, and God
gives us salvation. We are not second-class citizens. We are
not marginalized children of God.”
“God doesn’t marginalize. Homophobes do,”
he insists. Mickley notes that Bible doesn’t condemn human sexual
expression.
“And when I say ‘human,’ it has the
richness and the beauty of full humanity with its well-ordered and
balanced components. If I’m fully human, I have the intellectual,
physical, spiritual and emotional sides of my being in harmony.
These are in quantities and qualities which exist only in the human
species,” Mickley says.
He points out that “some of God’s children
are homosexual and deserve same-sex companionship and entitlement to
the best of all sex. Nowhere in the Bible, in truth, is there any
word or passage which condemns” homosexual sexual orientation, gay
and lesbian love, or same-sex loving relationships (or marriages).
Unions
“If God’s children, Adam and Eve, were
understandably heterosexual, it also must be understood that some of
God’s children, through Adam and Eve, evolved to be homosexual
(just as children of heterosexual parents today often are born
homosexual). And they too are entitled to the best expression of
their sexuality in a loving, enduring, committed relationship. This
is true whether Adam and Eve are historical or mythical. We are in a
world that has evolved, and God is prime mover of that evolution,”
Mickley explains.
He cites the case of a lesbian couple. “They
were holding hands after I had officiated at their Holy Union
ceremony. They gave God all the credit: “We knew from the start
that we were meant for each other. God made us the way we are and
brought us together, and nobody could be happier than we are.” I
saw they were proud to be in love with one another while basking in
the sunlight of God’s love for them.
Justo, however, believes in the sanctity of
marriage, which he believes should be between a man and a woman.
“If I could get back to the council, I would
file a resolution urging all gays and lesbians to get married.
It’s better to get married. Being with other gays is good,
but what if there is no one like me to take care of them?” Justo
said.
He added that gay men, in particular, should try
getting married to someone of the opposite sex. “There are
many women now who love a man even if he is gay.”
Discrimination
In the 1960s, Justo recalls that there were no
parlors and effeminate gays would peddle their manicure and pedicure
services from house to house. They would risk getting beaten
up by “homophobic” men who drink in groups in front of the
neighborhood store.
“It used to be a crime to be gay. If you
didn’t do manicure or pedicure services, you prostituted
yourself,” Justo said. Since the prevailing belief then was
that gays and lesbians were “jinxes,” very few found jobs.
Some gays found work being “hostesses,” the
equivalent of today’s GROs, in “honky-tonk” bars which lined
Pasay’s streets.
“Policemen would force these transvestites to
do fellatio on them. Kung ano-anong kababuyan,” Justo said.
Justo also tried to create a position for a gay
desk officer in Pasay police stations.
“A 17-year-old gay was sodomized by an
ex-convict. He was crying, but the policemen told him he
should be happy instead that someone had sex with him,” Justo
rages.
The Pasay City council resolved that cases
involving gays be handled by the women’s desk officer, since no
males in the police force wanted to be gay desk officers.
Lesbians, on the other hand, also suffered when
they were involved in love triangles. The men would beat them
up for taking away their women, Justo notes.
Many lesbians then were restricting to jobs as
security guards and cleaning ladies because of the belief that they
were “bad for business.”
Aging gays and lesbians
Dan, at 64, is tall and handsome. He feels
lonely because his partner passed away because of heart attack.
Dan misses his partner so much: “I miss the laughter we shared and
the care that he gave to me.”
Though he is well off, many others are not.
For the unfortunate gays and lesbians who were
not able to attain financial security while young, Justo has issued
an invitation. He is also inviting families who have trouble with
gay sons or lesbian daughters to tell them they have a home with
him.
At the home for gays and lesbians, wards are
taught new skills to enable them to fend for themselves.
Justo himself, along with his mother, was taken
in by a gay couple, a lesbian who wore the pants and a gay man who
was the “wife.”
“I want to give them the caring I don’t see
other people giving them,” Justo says.
Justo also plans to file a resolution —
provided he is reelected as councilor in 2004 — to make part of
the Cultural Center of the Philippines complex stretching from Sen.
Gil Puyat Ave. to the Experimental Film Center to the vacant area
near Boom na Boom into a “gay park” where gays and lesbians can
walk around without being harassed by policemen.
“I want a place where gays and lesbians can
walk freely with their loved ones. Luneta’s taken over by
families,” Justo complains.
He is also in the thick of talks with lawyers
who have volunteered to examine how to advance the rights of gays
and lesbians.
“Gays and lesbians lack legal protection,”
he said.
Few, however, will refute what they have in
abundance — the capacity to love.
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