Tag Archives: LGBTQ

Qwertyman No. 141: Purity and Perfection

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Qwertyman for Monday, April 14, 2025

LAST WEEK, former Commission on Audit Commissioner and senatorial candidate Heidi Mendoza—a staunch exponent of good governance and nemesis of crooks—drew flak from some people who would have been her natural allies on the liberal side of the political spectrum: the LGBTQ community. At issue was her expressed disagreement with same-sex marriage, as a personal belief she did not seek to impose on anyone else. That still wasn’t enough for some same-sex marriage advocates, who announced their withdrawal of their support for her candidacy.

Of course both Heidi and her detractors have a right to their opinions, but I can’t help thinking that the only people chuckling at this situation are avatars of neither good governance nor gender rights, but the enemies of both.

Heidi Mendoza hasn’t been alone in this position of being seen to have been right on many things but wrong on—well, something, but something big enough to destroy and erase whatever good they’d done before. “Being seen” is important here, because it’s a matter of perception; like beauty, “wrongness” is in the eyes of the beholder. 

Today’s social media is populated by such beholders who can’t wait to see personalities make what they deem to be mistakes, and often to point those out with all the hawkish attentiveness of dancesport judges and the ruthless certitude of Pharisees. 

I’m sure you’ve come across many more such instances of people whom you thought you knew and whose ideas you had largely agreed with, only to find them—suddenly one morning—the object of the nastiest vitriol the Internet can be capable of dishing. Once blood is spotted in the water, the sharks start circling and a feeding frenzy follows. Many comments simply echo the previous one, seeking to be even louder and crueler; little attention is paid to context and nuance.

Witness what has happened just these past few weeks:

A political scientist and commentator who had grown a substantial following for his liberal positions got skewered for comparing Mindanao to sub-Saharan Africa. Never mind his explanatory reference to a scholarly study which made that comparison based on certain criteria. In the verbal shorthand of a TV interview, the soundbite was all that mattered to many.

An expert on infectious diseases—globally recognized in that field—was savaged for opining that former President Rodrigo Duterte should have been tried by a Philippine court instead of being bundled off to The Hague. Never mind that the good doctor made it clear that he was against EJK and all the wrongs that the old man is now in the dock for. Netizens seemed to take it against him that he tried to explain how many Mindanawons felt about Duterte, and that he had worked under that administration to help stop Covid during the pandemic.

A prominent journalist and exponent of ethical journalism—also a fervent convert to evangelical Christianity—upset and lost many friends when he declared his disagreement with the idea of transgender athletes competing with their biological counterparts. (It was a view shared by a former student of mine, a lawyer and legal scholar of the same religious persuasion.) This man’s longstanding commitment to the truth and to justice seemed trivial compared to what he had to say on this one issue.

No doubt these issues are centrally important to some, the litmus test by which they judge people’s character and their “true colors.” But which color is truly “true”—the mass of blue or the spot of yellow? And what effect does single-issue politics have on the big picture?

I wonder what all those Arab-Americans who withheld their vote for Kamala Harris because she didn’t sound pro-Palestinian enough are thinking now that the man they effectively helped return to power is speaking unabashedly about Gaza as “an incredible piece of real estate.” I know that some continue to insist that they did the right thing in holding on to the one issue that mattered to them, and of course it was their right to do so. But I can’t help thinking of all those Fil-Ams who trumpeted the Orange Guy’s alleged support for the rights of the unborn, in disregard of all the pain and misery he’s causing to the born. 

Me, I’m as liberal as they come, with all of that word’s pitfalls and contradictions. I believe in civil liberties and human rights, in free speech, in freedom from censorship, in the equal application of the law for all. I also support divorce, same-sex marriage, abortion rights, transgender rights, and gun control. I stand neither with Zionists nor Hamas but for peace for the people of Israel and Palestine. I believe in and pray to God—a God who is good and just—but mistrust organized religion and both extreme Right and Left (indeed, anyone who claims to know how life should be lived) and resist doctrine of any kind, whether Church, State, or Party. If you’re my FB friend and you find any of these too reprehensible for comfort, feel free to unfriend me, or to stop reading this column. 

I have to admit that, following major upheavals like the 2022 election and the Duterte arrest, I’ve lightened my roster of Facebook friends by offloading a number of characters whose preferences I loathed. I didn’t have any qualms about that, because they were “friends” only in the shallowest Facebook sense of the word. (I find Facebook useful, but blame it for its degradation and devaluation of “friendship.”) Most had never interacted with me, and neither of us would miss the other.

But there are friends you have in real life who are arguably worth more than their politics or religion. By this I don’t mean that they fatten your bank account or make your life easier (although some might); if anything, they remind us how much more complicated people and life can be, and how ideological purity or moral perfection may ultimately be less important (and certainly more boring) than the challenge of finding some common ground and surviving together. In continuing to talk with them, we talk with ourselves and those parts of us still capable of doubt and wonder. 

So disagree as I may with her on this particular point, I’m voting for Heidi Mendoza. I suspect I stand a better chance of convincing her to support same-sex marriage than of straightening out the crooks and dimwits eager to take her place in our already benighted Senate.

Qwertyman No. 74: A Church for All Humanity

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Qwertyman for Monday, January 1, 2024

YOU NEVER see me write about religion, because I believe it’s an intensely personal thing (albeit with a communal aspect), but I can’t help being surprised and saddened by what seems to me to be the latent homophobia—intentional or otherwise—brought to the surface by Pope Francis’ recent statement allowing Church blessings for same-sex couples. Despite the fact that that statement was heavily qualified—that it wasn’t to be seen as “sanctification,” etc.—it still triggered a violent backlash from conservative Catholics, clergy and lay persons alike, who protested that the edict violates established Church doctrine. 

Some of these objectors are my good friends (and they will remain so, unless they say otherwise). Many among them will proclaim that they’re not homophobic at all, that gay people and couples are among their best friends, and that they’re merely upholding a key tenet of their faith—which just happens to exclude homosexuals from the blessings of the Church, because they’re fundamentally living in sin.

But I can’t see how that attitude—which some might call a holier-than-thouness—advances Christian love and charity. Pope Francis’ halfway gesture is compromised enough as it is, but would still have been a welcome step toward redefining a church that’s tried to keep a stiffly male face—despite the many gay people in its ranks—for millennia.

I grew up a church-going Catholic boy (inevitably for a La Sallista) but stopped going to Mass a long time ago, as a liberal feeling distanced from the Church’s positions on such hot-button issues as birth control, abortion, divorce, and homosexuality, not to mention its too-cozy relationship with authoritarian regimes in many places around the world. 

I do admire and support the efforts of many priests, nuns, and other religious to confront and ameliorate our social problems and fight for justice and freedom. I continue to pray, many times a day and at bedtime, for the sick and the oppressed, and to thank God for my blessings. I never formally studied theology nor the history of religions, but from what I can gather (and here I invite the experts to instruct me) what distinguishes the Catholic Church from others is its emphasis on good deeds as the path to heaven, rather than faith alone. You have to earn your sainthood; it is neither promised nor can it be bought. If so, that appeals strongly to me, as I’m sure it does to others. 

But whenever I think of the Vatican and its hierarchy of old men whose meals are answered for by the alms of billions of the faithful and investments in blue-chip companies and real estate, among others, I remember a side of the Church that depends on its moral authority to survive as both a keeper of beliefs and as a global industry. 

No one is surprised by the sordid financial and sexual scandals that have rocked the Church, as they merely prove that some people who run it are as fallible as anyone else. This is not why I left the Church, which I still want to think of as something transcendent, an idea of community above the mortal men and women who make up its body. What disaffected me was the arrogance of its orthodoxy—in which, among religions, it is hardly alone.

I’ll grant that every religion needs a body of core beliefs, some of which will be non-negotiable; if you don’t like what you see, you’re free to go somewhere else. I understand the dismay of the faithful over “cafeteria-style” religion where you can pick and choose what to practice and what not. But I had thought, perhaps mistakenly, that religions have a stake in inclusivity, in upholding beliefs and values that embrace persecuted minorities (as the Christian church itself once was).

I’ll acknowledge that apostates like me probably have no business lecturing devout believers on matters of doctrine. But this isn’t even about the finer points of doctrine, but rather about the broad strokes of faith and, ultimately, what and who that faith serves. If issues like gay relationships and marriage and divorce are to be the line in the sand that separates the true Church from the false (rather than, say, love of neighbor), then sadly I must stay out (to which the conservative core can say “good riddance,” or otherwise pray for my wayward soul). Exclusionary policies are never just internal matters, because they affect the perception of the excluded; indeed, they affect the excluded, and those who identify with them.

Pope Francis has been the first Pope in a long time to have revived my hope in a Church that finally embraces the idea of an inclusive love of humanity as central to its practice, if not its survival. The closing of minds and hearts in our growing Trumpian dystopia calls for a far more powerful spiritual force to overwhelm the spitefulness gripping much of the world today. I would rather look up to Pope Francis and such other figures as the Dalai Lama—rather than a consistory of ambitious cardinals and bishops—to show the way forward. 

I hope I won’t be alone in suggesting that much more work remains to be done, even beyond Pope Francis, toward such liberative measures as the ordination of women, for the Roman Catholic Church to be not just a church for the 21st century, but for all time, and for all humanity.

(Photo from cnn.com)