Outing

an essay by Roger B Rueda

I see outing as completely case by case. Any gay reserves the right to change his mind or do whatever he thinks can give him a full advantage. So, I understand why Piolo, when we take it for granted that he is a gay, doesn’t want to come out of the closet. For one, he is an extremely handsome man with a plummy voice.  A hunk, he has an appealingly direct charm about him, and he’s got a nice smile. A great cheer goes up from the crowd whenever they catch sight of him. The electric atmosphere with Piolo thrills everyone wherever he goes. By now, Piolo is one of the Philippines TV’s top stars, being celebrated and wholesome, not to mention he’s a devout Christian. Throughout his career he has remained our masculine ideal: he is such an angel to put up with it.

We’ll sadly miss him, whenever he decides his gayness to be out in the open. We’ll be finding the show business lonesome when there is no more Piolo. And I think he is a lot happier to be who he is. He feels comfortable about what he does. If he lives at the incongruity of what we think he struggles with, it is his choice. Now, if he is not happy, it is his own doing, not ours. High on his agenda is perhaps to stay in the closet no matter how obscure it is and how despondent his life is in there. For one, what he thinks is more valuable is his image and his resolve to be a masculine ideal amongst us. He rather dies a closet gay than to live in shame and mortification.

Being gay is such a non-issue in the Philippines these days, so I think a gay who wants to stay in the closet has no one to blame when he dies unfortunate and dejected. People don’t care whether one is a gay or not. Our young people have always been very fair and broadminded. Modernism has opened our eyes to many things. Though homosexuality is done subtly, a lot of people these have forbearance about this now. They try to understand others and they try not to be disparaging. They do not act against other so long as these people respect them, too. Their opinion towards others is optimistic and unbiased.

A gay’s choice to be open about his sexuality must stem from the confidence that most people respect a gay for his professional skills and don't discriminate against him based on his personal life.

Coming out is hard to do. Most things worth doing are. The first step, being honest with oneself about one’s sexuality, is often the hardest. But once he does that, his closet's nature changes from denial to deception. And there are fewer and fewer excuses today for staying there.

It is embarrassing that many gay Filipinos still lie pointlessly about themselves to their friends, co-workers, and families. It's shameful that older gay men and women who have been closeted all their lives continue being closeted out of torpor, and it's sad that younger gay men and women create fake lives as opposed to embracing who they are.

Courage is catching: I think every gay needs to come out, go out, and help make it better even though gayness has remained a mystery. For one, gayness a riddle that invites reflexion without set answers and ingenuousness to discovering awareness that we can’t envisage. What’s the purpose of gayness? What’s the point of being gay, if having a same-sex orientation is not mere peculiarity or random chance? Of course, it is a test of taking. A boosting of what we have for the better of our life. A recognition of God’s given gift, which appears to be a curse, yet it is the best gift that leads us to wonderful way of life.

Human nature teaches us about the nature of God. We include gay people and straight people. Gay people love in gay ways and straight people love in straight ways. We can try to express what human nature reveals about God with words, but only out of sorts. We could say, for instance: God is gay, God is not gay, God is straight, God is not straight. These are fine (but limited) ways of talking about God.

God is like a gay person and God is like a straight person. There is loveliness in gay people and in straight people, and God is so lovely that God’s loveliness includes all the loveliness of gays and straights. There is loveliness in gay ways of loving and in straight ways of loving, and God’s ways of loving are so lovely that they include all the loveliness of gay and straight ways of loving.

God made some men gay, as He made them in His spitting image. God made gay men to love in gay ways, as God loves in gay ways. The splendour of gay men reveals the splendour of God. The splendour of gay ways of loving reveals the splendour of God’s gay ways of loving. When someone fears and dislikes a gay, he or she fears and dislikes God. When someone pours scorn on, despises, abhors, and harms a gay, he or she pours scorn on, despises, abhors, and harms God.

Some people have bottled-up the truth about God’s gayness, because they have reviled and feared God. Some who have repressed the truth about God are straight and others are gay. The truth about God’s gayness has been revealed to those whose eyes are open.

I know one gay who I condemn for not coming out. Of course, I respect other gays of their decision not to, but in his case, I think his pretention is so grating. His theatrics are so obvious, but he keeps on pretending no one knows his gayness. Everybody knows as it were that he is save him. Whenever he sees a gay, he would glare at the gay. He treats him as if he had leprosy. He disdains gays as if they might harm him and waste his life lest he spends time on them or at least being kind to them. He is so trivial a closet gay. An illusionist. A casuist.

His actuation appears to be irksome. I think his existence in this world is of no use, a waste of vigour, because he doesn’t know who he really is, thus he doesn’t know his real purpose. He is a gay who negates his naturalness. He is an ambitious gay who wants to look like a real man despite his psychological horizon, and even physical. God has designed him to be a gay, yet he tries to repudiate this truth. He would create a life which is fake, just to make an impeccable image which is already so worn-out because his acting as a real man seems mediocre. So, I think he should stop now. He needs to come out in the open. He needs to be truthful at least to himself. And the most irritating is his anguish to gays, which can be seen in his eyes. He hates his gay students. His style is survival of the fittest, amongst his own sorts. He seems to be a communist trying to have an underground movement. He looks bitter all the time. Pitiful, right?

I love gays who love themselves, but there is no point in loving a gay who doesn’t know who he really is and who himself hates what he is and what God has made of him. He is a recalcitrant person who tries to dictate God despite the fact that he is just a mere human, in the lurch and feeble. He wants to define himself speciously. In the world of men, he is not Piolo; he is a monstrous, single-minded fantasist.

Outing is good. Outing is bad, but, hey Ricky, respect others and stop pretending that your sort is of Adam when you’re more bitchy than Eve.