Death and Life

The Church, the institution not the people, got a battery of stupid and hysterical defenders. This I have realized at our Pastoral Forum on RH Bill. The original speakers were Atty. Jo Imbong from the legal office of CBCP and Bro. Rene Perez of the Family Life Ministry of the Archdiocese of Manila. But there was a third wheel, perhaps due to the fact we are a Trinitarian parish, another speaker with a title Doctor and goes with the name Ligaya. It was Atty. Jo who recommended her so that there will, according to her, be a ‘scientific and medical’ point of view on the whole issue. I was the moderator of the day. I first introduced the woman with a title Doctor and goes with the name Ligaya, last name Acosta.

I never saw it coming. Her long introduction about her achievements and past life was already ominous on what her talk would dwell on. No, it wasn’t ‘scientific and medical’, it was fanatic and yes, idiotic. The only time she used the word scientific was when she hit the lectern and told her bewildered audience she can prove that homosexuals are ‘deficient’ and she could prove it, yes ma’am, ‘scientifically’. Whoa. Out of the topic, she pursued and pushed it. She flipped her slides and introduced their Culture of Death conspiracy theory. DEATH as per her brilliant mind stands for D-Divorce, didn’t look on EAT as my eyes popped on H which stands for HOMOSEXUALITY. We, gay people, promulgate and promote a culture of death in this Catholic country, based on her presmise. She ranted on, how can gay people support RH Bill when we do not know what reproduction means or when we can’t even be reproductive ‘ eh ang pagtatalik na lalaki sa lalaki e di naman nakakagawa ng anak! ‘ AIDS pa dinudulot, kamatayan hindi buhay!

I felt like being there inside the crater of Bulusan. I walked out. I didn’t create a scene, I just left quietly and with dignity. I don’t want to give her the satisfaction of arguing with a Gay Catholic. I am so above her, I will not argue with a bitch with a title Doctor and goes with a name Ligaya. She doesn’t deserve her name, she doesn’t deserve my anger. I pity her 11 children and her henpecked husband.

Death is just a stroke away but they never thought of it. That same day, our Parish Priest (to pacify me perhaps) asked me to join him in officiating wedding rites for Myra and Lito. Myra has breast cancer, with her time tick-tocking already. But Lito, a tall, good-looking man, proposed marriage not out of pity but because of love and a blissful life (whatever is left of it) together. Because Myra can no longer stand up on her own, the wedding was set at their modest home. Myra isn’t rich, we had to bow to enter their cramped but clean house. Lito isn’t rich either or he is after any inheritance or pension. A tricycle with a golden heart, he finances Myra’s chemo sessions and buys her meds. Now, that’s love. That’s life. And they want that love-life to be bound by marriage. I was silently crying like everybody else. We were all witnesses not only to the heartwarming ceremony but also to one great love-life story.

Ligaya, the woman with a title Doctor sees DEATH in everybody and in everything.

Myra and her husband Lito, the tricycle driver, see LIFE full of love.