Morality of sorts

TO BE sure, every person has the right to his or her own opinion and worldview, yet against the benchmarks of rationality and humanism, one can say there are opinions and worldviews that truly measure up, and there are those that simply fall short. But what happens when the latter kind has been deeply entrenched in the national psyche—with no small help from the monotheistic religions—that it has become the right thing, the natural thing, the only acceptable thing?

For instance, what if the well-contested opinion that animals do not as a matter of course perform homosexual acts—the opinion that leads some to the conclusion that humans who practice otherwise must be violating nature—is simply unfounded? Yet observing the world shows us that it is. One case is the bonobo chimpanzees in Zaire who spend around 60 percent of their sexual activity between two or more females. Another is the kings of the jungle themselves—lions—who do not seem to live up to their regal title. Of all the mountings observed among lions, 8 percent have been performed with other males—this after male lions pair for several days and engage in nuzzling and caressing.

These cases, and loads of others—from black swans and penguins and vultures to Amazon dolphins and elephants and even your bed bugs—demonstrate that when Noah was told by his god to “take to thee by sevens, the male and his female,” an arkful of poor queer animals must have been left behind.

But as science continues to shed more light on the territory of our ignorance, we are not surprised to see those who cling to their deep-rooted beliefs to do either of the following four defense responses, or a combination of all: snub, mock, reject or justify. A special form of the third kind has reared its ugly head in mainstream conversations: comfort-rejection, as I would like to call it. Almost oxymoronic? You bet it’s more of moronic. Love the sinner, hate the sin? Then what happened to “I’m entitled to my own opinion,” which can be taken as “I’m entitled to what is sin for me or not”?

The social crisis bears implications for two big areas: pluralism and policy. In the power battle among several discourses, letting the traditional sexual code perpetuate as the dominant discourse shall sideline and oppress the alternative ones. Since pluralism stands as a key feature of democracy, then we’re not quite living up to the ideal of accepting our differences.

Policy is no less affected. In the case of same-sex marriage, letting the dominant traditional discourse define what marriage should be like—and shutting out what the no-less-important marginalized discourse has to say about it—desecrates the sanctity of Article II, Section 6 of the Philippine Constitution: that the “separation of Church and State shall be inviolable.”

The blatant trespassing of the Church—in all its forms and manifestations, whatever creed it harangues—upon the affairs of the state (which we do not only see in alienating LGBT rights but in other rights, too, such as the reproductive ones, which is why the Reproductive Health Law is dead today) must never be overlooked. The blatant trespassing must be rejected, rebuked and challenged.

And speaking of challenge, let me venture to argue the following: If religious institutions and dogmas espouse the kind of morality that does not treat on equal footing its alternative versions, if they espouse the kind of morality that deprives large groups of people such as women and the LGBT community the reproductive and civil rights to which they are entitled, if their morality casts a shadow on the full potential of science and reason to enlighten the Filipino people to move society forward, then isn’t it time to rethink everything we have embraced?

And, with courage, isn’t it time to figure out on our own power the morality that actually works?

Linus Van Plata, 26, works as a policy researcher at the Presidential Commission on Visiting Forces under the Office of the President. He is a development communication graduate (magna cum laude) of the University of the Philippines.