Different

PINOY KASI

Different
By Michael Tan

Inquirer

Last updated 00:43am (Mla time) 08/23/2006

Published on Page A11 of the August 23, 2006 issue of the Philippine Daily Inquirer

THE superlatives were profuse for the two babies: pretty, precious, adorable, lovely. Missing my own Yna after almost two weeks of separation, I had to chime in as well, almost tempted to ask the proud parents for permission to carry the infants.
The elevators in the Toronto hotel where I was staying were running slow that day, so a small crowd eventually gathered around the couple and their babies. One was pushing a carriage with a sleeping baby inside, while the other one was carrying, with admirable aplomb, a baby in one arm and a baby bag in the other, overflowing with children's stuff.
From the first time I saw them, I knew the babies were adopted. The giveaway was that the two had, well, two daddies, a gay couple.
Normalized
Scenes like that are actually becoming more common in many parts of the world. Even in the Philippines, gay men and lesbians have been adopting children for the longest time ever, often informally, and more often as single parents. I know a gay physician whose lover died suddenly almost 20 years ago, leaving behind a wife and two children. The doctor took them all in, and raised the two children as his own, sending them to one of the best schools in Manila.
Gay couples raising children are more of a recent phenomenon, partly because homosexuality has been such an underground affair, making it difficult for two men, or two women, to build a stable relationship. Now that societies are more accepting, we're seeing more of long-term couples, including many who now want legal reforms to adopt children as couples, and to have their relationships recognized as civil unions.
All these developments upset some conservatives. I'm saying "some" because many conservatives actually welcome these developments. On Canadian TV the other night, there were two Baptist ministers, a man and his wife, being interviewed. The woman minister was totally in favor of gay marriages, arguing that a loving relationship should be blessed, whether it involves a man and a woman, or two men, or two women. Her husband used Scriptural passages to argue that homosexuality is wrong, but conceded that gay couples are as capable of loving relationships as heterosexual couples. These conservatives at least see the potentials for family values in gay relationships.
But others are not as open, and vehemently oppose legal adoption and legal marriages for same-sex couples, and the fear here is that such legal developments will "normalize" what they feel is immoral and abnormal.
I can understand those fears, seeing how that scene in the elevator will linger in people's minds and will be the topic of many conversations: "Oh, guess who I ran into at the elevator."
Natural
Yet when you think about it, what the moralists fear most is that people will see that gay men and lesbians are, well, as loving and nurturing as straight people.
After all, adopted children are often much more loved than "natural" children. The unwanted child becomes wanted, almost with a vengeance, often given a much better life than he or she would have had with the natural parents. Gay couples are also known, both in the West and here in the Philippines, to tend to take special children, those who aredifferently abled, or with developmental difficulties.
I suspect that facing so much social discrimination and hatred, gay people tend to latch on more quickly to the "underdog" child, and many will work miracles to bring out the child's full potentials.
'Diprensiya'
I've wondered about how the moralists deal with their own gay and lesbian relatives. It's inevitable; every clan has its own share of "suspects." The hard-liners simply cut ties with these queer relatives but others will grudgingly move toward patronizing tolerance. Who, after all, keeps the ever-sacred family running? Who do you run to when you need money? Who volunteers, or is volunteered to care for the young, the sick, the disabled? Who else but the "bakla" [gay] brother, the tomboy sister?
And who cares for the elderly parents? A friend of mine told me once about a young mother who had been fretting about an "effeminate" son, worrying that the child would grow up to be gay. This elderly woman, whose gay son pampers her like no other, advised the young mother: "Now wouldn't you be so lucky if he turned out gay?"
Many lesbian and gay children are committed to caring for their parents, but many too want to have children of their own, and not necessarily by marrying someone of the opposite sex. Is society fair to deny legal parenting status?
Alongside that move toward parenting, many gay men and lesbians struggle to sustain long-term personal relationships. Again, is society fair to deny same-sex couples certain rights? To give just one example, in many countries, including the Philippines, a gay man or lesbian cannot sign consent forms for emergency procedures or surgery for a same-sex partner. Yet, without any kind of legal rights associated with marriage, gay men and lesbians will find ways to stay by the side of a partner, caring for them through sickness and health, and, mind you, even death will not do these couples part.
Homophobia, the fear of homosexuality, grows on ignorance. When gay men and lesbians accede to social pressures and remain in the shadows, they are agreeing to perpetuate the ignorance and bigotry.
There is tremendous pressure to conform in the Philippines. The Spanish word "diferencia" only means difference, but it somehow mutated to the Filipino "diprensya," to mean "defect." The Spanish word for "defect" is "defecto" so really, in the Philippines, to be different is to be defective. Put another way, the discrimination against gay men is based on the idea that a man acting like the "weaker sex" must be "defective," as is the case for lesbians daring to be so "masculine."
The two men I met at that Toronto hotel were effeminate, the type many would want to make invisible. And yet I challenge anyone to tell me they are "weak" and "abnormal," as with the millions of other lesbians and gay men who choose to devote their lives to children not their own, to parents too old and weak for "normal" siblings to handle.
Traditionally, gay men and lesbians have drifted to the caring professions partly because that's what society assigns, with stern admonitions to be "respectable" and not to "practice" homosexuality. Times do change and these days, more people are ready to say: "I'm here to serve, but I want you to know I'm different and I'm proud of it."