Fairies-clenched fists juxtaposition a bizarre refutation of Oblation

I wonder if other people were struck as I was by the photograph complementing the story “UP grads exhorted to soar like fairies” (Front Page, 6/27/16). The graduates’ display of raised fists seemed an obvious reflection of the pugnaciousness that is the signature gesture of the country’s new President. What was ironic was the use by the commencement speaker, Alexander Atrio Lim Lopez, of the term “fairy” while he related his plan to reveal himself as gay to his parents, because homosexuals in the old days were sometimes labeled “fairies.”

The juxtaposition of fairy gentleness with the bellicosity of clenched fists seemed a bizarre refutation of the statue Oblation’s open-arms display of self-sacrifice.

—ISABEL ESCODA,

Cebu City