Outing

an essay by Roger B Rueda

There is no uniform path to selfhood, and certainly no singular script to follow when it comes to identity, especially the kind that has long been punished, celebrated, co-opted, or misunderstood. To be gay in today’s world, in the Philippines or elsewhere, is no longer the revolutionary condition it once was—though the personal struggle remains as intimate, as labyrinthine, as ever. The act of coming out, still, is fraught with contradiction. One cannot force timing upon another’s becoming. That much must be said with care.

Outing, if we must name it thus, is not a blanket virtue. It cannot be imposed. It must arise from an internal readiness, a confluence of strength and circumstance, and most often, an exhaustion with secrecy. Some do it with fanfare. Others whisper it only to themselves. And then there are those who never do it at all.

Take, for instance, the figure of Piolo—handsome, beloved, a man whose very presence elicits a breathlessness from the crowd. His masculinity is both performance and promise. If he is, as some assume, gay, then his silence is neither a betrayal nor a sin. It is strategy, perhaps. Or maybe something softer—fear in a tuxedo. He is an icon not for his honesty, but for his image. He has become, willingly or not, the nation’s idea of manhood: well-spoken, gentle, smiling, devout. He is tolerated not because he is gay or straight but because he never forces us to choose. He remains ambiguous, and in that ambiguity, he becomes myth.

But myths, too, become prisons.

There is a sadness that comes with watching a man live so cleanly in the eyes of others while growing dusty inside his own skin. If Piolo is happier this way, then that is his right. And yet, what an ache it is to imagine that his happiness may be curated—that he has chosen the dim familiarity of the closet over the blinding light of truth.

The truth, in this context, is never simple. It cannot be reduced to slogans or creeds. The Philippines has, in many ways, become more tolerant. Our youth are wiser, less shocked by difference. And yet, tolerance is not the same as celebration. It is still safer, still more profitable, still more comfortable, to be seen as straight.

A gay person who stays closeted today may be protecting themselves. Or they may be betraying themselves. Or both.

But the ones I cannot abide are those who use the closet not just as refuge, but as a weapon. The ones who glare at those who have dared to live authentically. The ones who sneer at younger gays while playing hetero for applause. The ones who deny their own nature and punish others for living theirs.

These men do not simply deny truth—they distort it. They create lives that are so performative they verge on the grotesque, caricatures of manhood built not on integrity but on fear. They are actors too long in a role. They have forgotten the line between pretense and identity.

One such man—I do not name him because names are rarely the point—has built his life on that very masquerade. He teaches, he leads, he speaks with a voice that is strained from repression. He sees a gay student and stiffens. He looks with contempt at the very image of what he once could have been. He has made his life a study in bitterness, weaponizing shame like an ideology. He despises not only others, but his own reflection.

And what of God, then? That vast and unnameable force we claim to mirror?

If God made humans in His image, then surely He made them with variance. With contradiction. With desire that runs in different directions, all equally luminous. Perhaps God is not gay, and not straight. Perhaps God simply is—and the rest is our projection, our longing to comprehend what refuses to be caged.

Love is a mirror. In its truest form, it reflects the divine. And when gay love is honest and brave, it becomes one of the clearest windows into that divine. To revile it is to reject beauty. To punish it is to blind oneself to complexity.

There is no virtue in pretending to be someone you are not. There is no wisdom in condemning those who have done the difficult, necessary thing of choosing truth. The gay man who hates himself cannot love others. The gay man who sneers at other gays is not righteous; he is lost. He is not Piolo. He is a ghost.

Coming out is not a headline. It is a reckoning. It is a quiet revolution in the bones. And sometimes, it is the only way to become real.

In the end, the closet is not just a place. It is a posture. And the tragedy is not in hiding—but in forgetting what it was you were trying to protect in the first place.