Sweet, demure Charice no more

Filipino international singer Charice Pempengco, “coming out of the closet” and revealing herself as a lesbian, received different reactions and comments. Some supportive, some not.

I for one felt some sadness to see such a sweet, demure girl like Charice transformed into a boyish-looking persona, complete with tattoos adorning her arms and the area below the neck and admitting to a relationship with another girl who seemed to enjoy the attention she too is getting.

Charice is no ordinary girl. She is an international figure who has made a name for herself at a very young age and we Filipinos were made proud of what she has accomplished. Surely she has brought honor to our country.

Now stripped of her former look and identity, the girl that endeared herself to many because of her femininity and simplicity, a model for many other aspiring young female singers, the girl Charice that we have known, I feel, has ceased to exist.

I sympathize with her and many out there who are “riding in the same boat.” Yes, they can go ahead and live with the “choices” they have made, if by doing so, they feel they set themselves “free.” I am not—and so are others—in a position to judge as immoral those who opt for same sex relationship/marriage as the Catholic Church forbids. All I know is that the Bible tells that God Himself is against it and that was the reason Sodom and Gomorrah were destroyed. Life is short and the afterlife is eternal. I just pray that in Charice’s pursuit of “peace” and “freedom,” she as well as others like her, would always bear this in mind.

—THERESA PILI-NISPEROS,

Tondo, Manila