Pride month

Cong Corrales .

“There’s nothing wrong with you. There’s a lot wrong with the world you live in.” — Chris Colfer, American actor, singer, and author

IT is June once again. It is Pride Month, a month when we celebrate and advocate for equal rights for members of the LGBTQ+ community.

To be honest, I never really cared about this month before, other than it marks the first half of the year. Don’t get me wrong. I am not homophobic. Many of you, my avid readers, know that I spent 12 years of my life in an exclusive boys’ school. If there is one thing I’ve learned from those 12 years, it is that homosexuality has got nothing to do with the lack of courage, and neither does it lessen one’s humanity. It is also most certainly not a disease which could be “cured.”

So, when the ignorant git from Malacanang told an audience in Japan last week that he was once gay and that he got “cured” by beautiful women, it must be called out as what it really is — a display of naked bigotry.

“Good thing Trillanes and I are similar. But I cured myself. When I began a relationship with [ex-wife Elizabeth] Zimmerman, I said, this is it. I became a man again,” UK-based news portal Independent quoted it as saying.

The Independent goes on to report that its “one and only” Honeylet Avanceña was with it when it made the statement.

So, I guess it is like a piece of bacon after all — “honey-cured.”

This kind of statement should be rebuked since it comes from a man who has had a long list of gay-bashing but still enjoys substantial popularity.

When one of my daughters opened up to me to tell me she is queer, I knew it took her a lot of courage to come out the way she did.

Like most men its age, they seem to be locked in believing that homosexuality means lack of valor, courage. They and it believe that homosexuality equals being a sissy or cowardly. These people grew up thinking that boys should not show affection and emotions.

This year’s Pride Month is particularly momentous in that it also marks the 50th anniversary of the Stonewall riots in New York. In the early hours of June 28, 1969, police raided the Stonewall Inn in the Greenwich Village in Manhattan. From that day up to July 1, the gay community in New York held demonstrations that were mostly violently dispersed by the police.

If that wasn’t courage, standing up for what you believe in, then I don’t know what it was that moved the gays to stand toe-to-toe against NYPD’s “finest.”

It is 2019, for crying out loud. It is ironic that in this supposed information age, this kind of backward thinking still exists. How many riots will the gays have to fight for the cavemen to understand that they have as many rights as them?

I enjoin you, my dear readers, to support and join this year’s Pride March. Let’s join hands with the LGBTQ++ community in breaking the chains of bigotry.

(Cong B. Corrales serves as associate editor of this paper.)