Whoa, Where Did That Come From?

The Philippine Daily Inquirer is a funny newspaper. I don't actually read it on a regular basis, and although I find its columnists on the whole to be intelligent, I gave up on their consistent and rather redundant anti-administration rants a long time ago. Call me an old fuddy-duddy but I still prefer the relatively more sedate work of Amado Doronilla and Max Soliven.

Imagine my shock when one of these older, more sedate writers, retired Supreme Court Justice Isagani Cruz, suddenly wrote, of all things, a diatribe against homosexuals.

Scant weeks earlier, they had published a really badly written article about bullies (that I trashed in a post on my barkada's blog), but this new piece really just blew my mind. More than anything else, the guy really showed what an old fart he is.

Understandably, the gay and lesbian community, as well as their friends, were all over him like horseflies on a turd. Fellow Inquirer columnist (and now officially outed member of the homosexual community) Manuel Quezon III called Cruz a hatemonger and steeped his discourse in a healthy amount of history to bolster the point.

By way of a retort disguised as an apology, Cruz defended his Constitutional right to express himself, and cited the likes of Voltaire and Oliver Wendell Holmes. Big mistake, considering that regardless of the fact that (to the best of my knowledge) he didn't actually finish college, dear old Manolo is quite well-steeped in all forms of history, having majored in it for quite some time. I was his classmate in 1994.

Quezon's rejoinder (wow, who thought I'd be using the word 'Quezon' to describe anything other than the city I live in?) was, as could be expected, rich in historical reference, and brought to light some rather unsavory revelations about both historical luminaries: apparently they were both bigots. Yes, you can express your hatred, he said, but being a member of the oppressed minority, I have a right to object.

The people calling for Cruz's head are understandably upset, but at the end of the day, they're all of them idiots.

I have a lawyer friend whom I've known since college (going on...what? Ten years now?) who is quite comfortable with his own sexuality, and even lives with a doctor. It's kind of like Will Turner with a boyfriend of equal professional stature. I showed him Cruz's article, especially since he found it hard to believe at first that it could even have been written by someone whose work he admired, and upon reading it, he simply shook his head and said, in not so many words, "the guy's getting senile."

And that's pretty much the best way to take it, really.

About six or seven years ago I encountered similar narrowmindedness from the geriatric set. I was hanging out in the house of my great-uncle (my grandmother's baby brother) because I was about to take out my two young cousins to see a movie. It was lantern parade season in UP, and for this reason my great-uncle, without any provocation from me, started ranting about how immoral the whole concept of the oblation run was. In retrospect, it was a bad idea, but I engaged him (translated: pinatulan ko siya) in a discussion, at first a calm one, about how basically no one was really hurt by the whole affair, and how everyone involved was pretty much an adult anyway. My great uncle would hear none of it, and became even more strident. As a result, our "discussion" degenerated into a shouting match, with him slinking off in dejected defeat when I basically had him beat out in terms of sheer volume. This gave me no satisfaction, however. My victory tasted like ashes.

I couldn't really care how respected Cruz is. He's over 80 years old and is more liable than most people to say asinine things. It's a fact of life. He's just having trouble adjusting to the way the world is changing, and is lashing out in the only way he knows how, really. The best thing to do in this situation would be just to leave an old man to his ramblings rather than calling for his blood. The people doing so, gay or straight, are inevitably putting themselves in an unfavorable light.

What people don't seem to realize is that he may have done the gay and lesbian community a huge service by putting the spotlight so squarely on them; next year, they have a solid chance of electing their first party-list congressmen.

My advice: when Danton Remoto and the other party-list representative win their seats next year, they should give Cruz a big-old thank you for shooting them into the stratosphere.