The Gay Address

Ladies and gentlemen, today I stand before you as an average gay man.

I have no intentions of saying that I am a proud gay man. Because truth be told, I am not proud at all. And why should I? Pride, when not practiced carefully, is a dangerous thing. It is both a vice and a virtue. Being proud means you think your stature is above others in some way, and honestly I don't think of myself as having such. The good side of pride on the other hand, lets you greatly relish the things you have done in your life. Still, I cannot be proud for something that I have no control of. We can be proud of our achievements and our accomplishments since we have worked painstakingly hard for them. Be proud of an award. Be proud of your work. But being gay is not something you extraordinarily accomplish. It is not something you aspire to. You don’t work hard to be gay. It just happens naturally. So I am not going to say I am proud, rather I embrace my being gay because it is part of who I am.

Coming up here and speaking to everyone of you is one of the toughest decisions I ever had to make in my life. And I have made my fair share of them. However, I feel that I can’t just sit idly by the sidelines anymore. I have seen and heard enough. Let me first say that I am not some messiah or a poster boy for a cause sent by my people to deliver light against the ignorance of some. I am not Neo from The Matrix so I am not The One. I speak for myself and I certainly cannot speak for the entire homosexual populace. But my emotions right now belong to that of a typical gay man who is living a very typical life. And I am sure one or two, if not all like me, have had some of these sentiments before.

I am only one...but I am one, as Edward Everett Hale once said.

I bet everyone of you has some relative, a family member or a friend who is openly gay. If you think you have none, think  again. You just may not be aware of it.  And if you do know somebody who's gay, please avoid asking them the age old question: when did you realize you’re gay? That has got to be the oldest question in the gay bible, and a really jaded one at that. I’ve lost count on how many times I’ve heard and answered this in the past. Often times, we would give an arbitrary answer of a certain age or a particular incident just to bring an end to the discussion. Truth is, no one really knows the answer. Not even us. There is no exact time and date of such realization because at the back of our minds, we have always known that we are different from everyone else. As long as we can remember, we’ve known always that we are gay (though accepting who we are and telling people about it is a whole different matter). We are not like caterpillars that spin cocoons at one point in our lives only to emerge out as fantabolous queer butterflies. We don’t wake up one day and say to ourselves, “hey, let me try being gay for a change”. Being gay is as natural to some extent as being say, an Asian or a Latino. It is a product of both genetic and social factors. A product of nature and nurture.  So when you ask that proverbial question to queer people, you’re asking a question with no definite answer. It's pointless.

Also when you call a gay person, please call him or her using his or her real, parent-given, legal name. Or his nickname would suffice. Though sometimes we brush this off, calling us hoy bakla (hey queer) is not proper. It is not that we are ashamed of who we are and our sexual preference. Yes we are baklas but we have people names, you know. The term bakla, although slowly losing its negative connotation in society is rather vague and is improper to use especially when the purpose is to identify whom you’re speaking with. Besides, we don’t call the attention of straight people by calling out their sexual preference. We don’t say hoy straight! (hey straight!)  as it is impolite. Our parents gave us our names for such purposes.

At this moment, I would also like to encourage each and everyone of you to look at me. Look hard. Use scrutiny if you may. If you examine me closely, you will see that I have no special markings to announce to the whole world my preference to sleep with other men.  I keep no tiaras, diamond-bejewelled sceptres or velvet-tasselled tuxedos in my closet. There is no special halo, no unicorn tattoo, no pixie wings in my body. From the outside, I look like any other twenty-five year-old average Joe you see out in the street. I shave my facial hair. I keep my hair trimmed and neat. I use the type of deodorant designed to keep guys’ smellier armpits smelling daisy fresh. I prefer wearing plaid shirts and worn-out jeans. Sometimes, I also don’t shower.

No, I don’t wear make-up. One of the misconceptions that most people have about us is that gay people like me love to wear makeup. I for one, don’t. Not because I think it makes me less of a man but because, personally it’s just not who I am.  But there are some of us who love to wear cosmetics. Much like how heterosexual punk guys wear thick eyeliners and how Scottish men sometimes wear skirt-looking kilts, some of us prefer to show the world our sense of self through fashion. And there is nothing wrong with that.  A small part in all of us wants to express our self-identity through the image that we project to other people. And we are no exception to that rule.

I also want to take this opportunity to debunk one of society’s myths that plague people like me. I want to say that not all gay guys showcase their flamboyant personas. Well, not all queers have flamboyant personas to begin with. Although some of us do adore Broadway. Some do ballet and some do crochet. But come to think of it, such activities are not restricted to any gender. No law prohibits a specific gender from doing them. And while we are patron of the arts and theatre, a fair number of us also watch sports. We are into rigorous heteroactivities like motorsport and boxing. Most of us lift weights and do all kinds of macho stuff.  Heck, some of us throw ball better than most straight guys out there.  Much like not all straight guys prefer to play ball, some of us also don’t usually do the things that are stereotypical gay.

What I’m trying to say is that we are diverse like you. We are living in the extremes and the in-betweens much like everybody else. That is because we are just as humans as the next guy.

Last year, an analysis regarding the appeal of the US military policy, “Don’t Ask Don’t Tell” came out stating that homosexual military men are three times more likely to commit sexual acts towards heterosexuals. Quite shocking, isn’t it? We can sit here and argue all day long on how the particular research has come to that conclusion based on the methodology or its sample size, but what we can not argue about is how the conclusion of the said study puts stigma among gay men as predatory sexual offenders. It is disheartening for us to be labelled as such. And based solely on one factor—our sexual orientation. The trepidation of being judged and having to endure looks of disgust from people, both strangers and family, puts most gay men back in their closets.  This fear is what keeps some gay men and women from coming out openly and this makes them ashamed of who they are as individuals. It hurts their self-esteem. It makes them feel disgusted about themselves, which on some cases, causes for some them to end their lives.  But being gay doesn’t automatically equate to being rapists. We do not condone sexual abuse. We are not all molesters. We are not all pedophiles. While it is a fact that there are documented cases of homosexual people doing inhuman sexual abuses to others, there are also heterosexual people who are guilty of the said crimes. While many of you mistake those who abuse and terrorize children sexually as purely homosexuals, what most fail to consider is that they are also maniacs and sociopaths. It is always their clinically-deranged minds that drive them to do such inexplicably abhorring things, not their gay nature. They are crazy and dangerous and are threats to society, and we are with you in saying that these people should not be roaming our streets. But I implore you that when you scream obscenities at them or condemn them, that you condemn their dysfunctional violent nature, not their sexual preference. Not all gay men are sexual offenders much like not all criminals are of certain ethnicity or gender. The world that we are all living in is filled with bad people; straight and gay, men and women, whites and blacks. Often times, gay people like me are also the victims of crimes which are sexual in nature. The door always swings both ways ladies and gentlemen. Always.

In light of this, I would like to say that there is more to a gay person than just sex. Contrary to popular belief, we do not have sex every minute we’re alone with each other. That is just absurd. We don’t get some all the time. Our world is also not limited to the proverbial the top-bottom-versa paradigm. However, it would be improper for me to say that all gays are born saints or immaculate. We are not. We are humans and we have human urges as well. Everyone has. And just like everybody, we act towards these biological urges. Our sexual drive is the same as everybody else’s. On a few occasions, some of these urges are manifested verbally. Hence, you might have encountered those who are sexually-active, lewd and vulgar gay men at one point. You might have classified them as your typical parloristang bading[i] who has nothing else on his mind but how many men he can hada[ii] and book[iii] in one night. I am not condemning them by the way. If that’s how they want to live their lives, they have every right to do so. But bear in mind that they are but a small subset of the general population of our community. Much like there are also socially-inept, loud and promiscuous people in the straight society. You may deem a gay person lewd, but realize that a person is lewd because he is by nature, period. He chooses to be and act lewd, not because he is gay. We have brains, we think. We have hearts, emotions. Most of us have unmovable faith and spiritualities. Before you over generalize gay people on being immoral, ask yourself if the heterosexual rapist is any better than whom you condemn. Better yet, get a mirror and take a hard look on yourself. In any case, no one has the right to condemn another human being as immoral to begin with. The concept of moral relativism tells us that morality is fluid and non-absolute. It is relative to the society that you belong to. What you may deem moral may not be the same with another culture and there is no universal standard by which we are to judge others.

Today I come before all of you to say that, as you can see, we are not at all special people. We are living in the extremes and in the in-betweens just like everyone. Years of media misrepresentation and our silenced voices have put us inside a small box of strict stereotypes and it is time that we break free. Because whether you like it or not, we are here. And we intend to stay as who we are. We are not here to recruit your children. We are not here to eradicate the heterosexual way of life and consequently the entire human race.  It cannot be denied that we need heterosexual procreation for our generation to prosper on. We are not putting our sexual orientation above others. We are not an extraordinary breed of men and women nor do we seek special treatment. We are just as normal as everyone else. What we want is to be assimilated as a normal and functioning part of your society, of our society.

I am compassionate. I am normal. I am human.

I am gay.

Thank you.

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[i]  Gay men who work at beauty salons

[ii] To perform oral sex on

[iii] From booking, colloquial term for hiring male prostitutes for sexual favors.




Author's Note: Last night, I dreamt that I was supposed to give a speech to a bunch of people. If ever that dream becomes real, this is what I would say to them.