2 cents worth

the long weekend allowed me to bloghop like crazy. i was able to read a lot of good blogs and a few that weren't quite there.

something led me to the site of mlq3 (i wish i had a 'cool' initial like that. very trademark-able), and to the uninformed, he is manolo quezon.

funny how just a few days ago (while watching tfc), i came across a teaser for a show on the anc (the abs-cbn news channel) and it was about manolo quezon and his show called 'the explainer' and i'm like, 'what? the explainer?' didn't they have anything better? like 'the manolo quezon show' or 'manolo explains' or 'manolo reports'. that's probably the best their creatives can come up with, 'the explainer'. i can't watch the show even if i wanted to because i only have tfc on cable. i don't have the satellite dish and i am not a directv subscriber.

anyhow, reading through his posts and following a lot of links, i came across one controversial topic, the one where he wrote about his objections to the isagani cruz column 'don we now our gay apparel'. he called it 'the grand inquisitor.'

Retired Supreme Court Justice Isagani Cruz says that his vigorous and vicious condemnation of gays, lesbians and transgendered people is not supposed to incite hatred and intolerance—or to be precise, that he is not invoking a blanket condemnation of all gay people. He only objects to some, not all.

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 find it neither reasonable nor acceptable. I do not even find it understandable. Cruz does not understand us, does not want to, would be unwilling to. Yet he says he hates only some, not all, of us, and expects “some of us” to embrace and thank him?

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?

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. Whether we have a little learning or not, whether we speak in the same manner or not, regardless of what we wear and what mannerisms we choose to exhibit, we are the same, for in the fundamental things—those we choose to love, to have relationships with and with whom we aspire to share a life marked by a measure of domestic bliss and emotional contentment—there is no difference. To permit Cruz to make such distinctions is to grant him and all those like him an intolerable—because it is fundamentally unjust—power to define myself and those like me.

it's a great read, so if you have time, digest the entire article. and in the spirit of fairness, the link to the article by the former supreme court justice.

where's my 2 cents' worth? mr. cruz should not have written that piece in the first place because it revealed how ignorant he is about the issue and he shouldn't have stirred the hornet's nest because while some people may have respected his opinions before (him being a former supreme court (supreme court!) justice), in one fell swoop, he lost readers (this one included) and corollary to that, respect, the one thing that he took away from all the homosexual people he maligned in that article.