Perhaps Naomi Wolf, the liberal progressive feminist writer, symbolizes it best.
The Vagina author thought she discovered something legions of Victorian historians missed: evidence of 19th century prudish cruelty against homosexuals.
Seeing the term “death recorded,” Ms. Wolf took that as proof that the British government executed those committing sodomy. She promptly weaved an entire book on that: “Outrages: Sex, Censorship, and the Criminalization of Love.”
Only thing is: she was wrong.
Tragically, laughably, horribly wrong.
A cursory glance at Wiki shows that death recorded “meant that the judge was abstaining from voicing a sentence of capital punishment in cases where the judge foresaw that a royal pardon would be forthcoming if a proper death sentence were to be issued. It was, in other words, a death sentence in name only, with no actual effect in law.”
What made it worse was that Wolf tried to pass off as academic source an article written by an AD Harvey, later on revealed as having the reputation of being a hoaxer.
Making her book based entirely on a wrong or false premise.
Unfortunately for everyone, wrong or false premises are what makes the same sex “marriage” and SOGI advocacy.
At this point, a caveat: this column of course believes in the dignity and respect for every human being.
But the SOGI fight, for example, is a fight for rights the LGBT already has.
Every reasonable thing they say they want in the SOGI is in the Bill of Rights (and the Civil Code and the Revised Penal Code).
As for marriage, nothing is stopping gay couples from celebrating their relationship publicly and to live openly. There are legal instruments available to protect property and testamentary arrangements.
So what is being truly asked, therefore, are something else: privileged “rights” and government recognition for same sex “marriage.”
Because if you’re asking for rights over and above that available to everyone, then you’re asking for a “privilege.” Which begs the question, why?
For same sex “marriage,” considering that the Bill of Rights, actually our entire civil liberties legislation and jurisprudence, are designed to restrain government interference, the LGBT lobby strangely is asking the reverse: control us.
Because control is what government recognition effects. Which again begs the question: why?
For SOGI rights, the why leads to an impossibility. Because there are no reasons. Homosexuals have every constitutional right as heterosexuals.
And why only them? They constitute 2% (5% at most) of the population. Indigenous peoples are 10-20%, yet they live under the same constitutional rights framework as everyone else.
Also, who is homosexual? Set aside gaslighting pseudo-medical articles declaring everyone is actually gay (which if true actually demonstrates why everyone should indeed be under the same legal framework), there is the absence of any medical, psychological, physical categorical evidence to conclusively prove a person is homosexual or transgender (or whatever permutation that liberal progressives can invent).
No gay gene, no gay blood, offerable in court.
Only subjective personal testimony for one to claim discrimination under a SOGI law or for another to prove that no discrimination was intended.
Just imagine the chaos that will ensue: rights imposed and penalties borne all out of a passing feeling or fleeting desire at a particular time.
For gay “marriage,” why should the government recognize it? Sex and children are not what marriage is for, so the gay lobby tells us, but love. Why should the government use up resources and tax money to regulate “love”?
And why not the love barkadas have for each other? Or teen heterosexuals when they start dating? Or parents and their children, or foursomes or twentysomes, or owners to their pets? Why can’t they get married as well and have the government recognize it?
But what do you care? Gay marriages or civil partnerships won’t affect you. Also, heterosexual couples cheat and priests molest, so how’s that for marriage?
The latter is an ad hominem, which does not detract from marriage’s rightness.
The former we know is not true, that even private acts have public consequences.
Look at the boy gamers and Japan’s declining marriage (and child) rate.
Or China’s one child policy and their present scarcity of women.
When President Duterte joked about rape, many were correctly appalled. Because we know that even words have social consequences.
But what the LGBT lobby is asking for go beyond mere words. They’re demanding Philippine society be reengineered.
There are millennia of facts and reason demonstrating why marriage can only be between a man and a woman in comprehensive union ordered towards procreation and family life.
The problem is if Filipinos decide to ignore all that and instead indulge in the fallacy of wishful thinking: yes we know facts but we’d rather believe this.
Hopefully, we choose good sense and the common good.
Otherwise, one can only say: hell is not only paved with good intentions, it is polished, furnished, and heated with it.
Jemy Gatdula is a Senior Fellow of the Philippine Council for Foreign Relations and a Philippine Judicial Academy law lecturer for constitutional philosophy and jurisprudence.
Twitter @jemygatdula
