SA 21 – A
TEAM WERQ:
Paolo Halili
Bianca Lebron
Martie Lopa
Marc Malferrari
Marianna Mercado
Audrey Mooney
Rebekah Reyes
Miel Soriano
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Homosexual comedian’s such as Vice Ganda, Pooh, and Sweet, to name a few, are a big hit and are loved by many in the country. Also singer and songwriter Aiza Sueguerra has been in the music industry spotlight up until this day and still continues to succeed in her field. In Ateneo alone do we have a bench-organization called “The Dollhouse” for the LGBT community in school and those that support them. In the Philippines today, it is quite evident that the LGBT communities are very much accepted AND respected by a good number in the country. For this reason, we chose to be homophobic activists as our identity for our deviance project. Due to the fact that the homosexuals are widely accepted in our country, it is a rare sight seeing homphobics yelling out their opinions and beliefs against homosexuals. Seldoml do we encounter protesters lurking around the cities or establishments disallowing homosexuals within their areas. Therefore, we wanted to observe how, in a community where homosexuals are widely accepted, will react to outspoken homophobic activists.
We are aware that we study in a catholic school and mostly those that are against homosexuals are from catholic communities due to their strong biblical beliefs: although, the Ateneo, just like most catholic universities in our country, were never really known to condemn homosexuals. Thus, for a change, we wanted to be homophobics and use outrageous homophobic statements that will cause shock, disgust, and disapproval by many of our fellow students. We also made sure that the statements we used involved God, to ultimately test the reactions of people.
Our identity’s main function in the society is to eradicate the idea of having same sex relationships. In the structural functionalism point of view, our identity’s manifest function is to keep society as it was like before where men were with women. These people don’t want to mess with tradition and changing it and changing the norms in society disturbs them. As a latent function, the identity that we chose unintendedly causes less diseases that are now present in society like STDs and HIV. According to Centers for Disease Control and Prevention or CDC (2014), diseases such as STDs and HIV are increasing among gay and bisexual men.
Anti-gay protesters look and dress exactly like normal citizens would on a day to day basis. Based on several videos and interviews conducted about homophobia, most of the people shown were dressed in casual clothes such as polos, T-shirts, jeans, and rubber shoes. It is interesting to note that most of the protestors shown in the videos are males. They are usually wearing muted colors so as to contradict the colorful nature that is associated with gays. They also prefer to wear "masculine" colors such as blue, black, and gray. The women who appear in the videos are usually dressed conservatively, however there are a few depicted who are dressed in short shorts and tank tops proving that homophobia is something that can everyone can possess and not just restricted to a certain type of person. The men also usually have short and well-cut hair while the women wear their hair long in order to oppose what they believe as "gay" hairstyles where the women cut their hair short and men grow their hair.
One of the most famous anti-gay communities is the Westboro Baptist Church which strongly opposes homosexuals in society. They frequently lead many protests that convey their views on their beliefs. The slogans that we carried in our parade were based on actual signs that these protestors carried. Slogans like "God Hates Fags" and "Homosexuality is a Sin" are most often written on these signs in order to emphasize that homophobes believe that homosexuality is against the Catholic religion. Most of these people also believe that gays are the reason that tragedies such as the September 11 attacks occurred because of the homosexuals in society, thus some of their signs talk about how "Fags Doom Nations" and such.
On Brand X with Russell Brand, he interviews two of the notoriously anti-gay leaders of the Westboro Baptist Church, Steve Drain and Timothy Phelps. In this interview, you could see how defensive they got when the audience and Russell Brand were countering their beliefs, thoughts, and ideas about homosexuals. Despite the great counter-arguments of Russell Brand, they were very firm about their beliefs that what is written in the bible is what one must follow, and were not even a little bit open-minded about what the people had to say. These two men would smile and chuckle at some of the jokes Russell made about being gay but only because they actually believed in what Russell was saying such as people going to hell if one condones this behavior of homosexuality. As Russell brings out homosexuals, you can see the disgust and judgment in their faces, especially as Steve shakes his head just at the mere introduction of these people. Nearing the end of the interview, Russell sits in between these two men and tries to hold their hands, you can hear Timothy say “Nah, nah. No touching” and see Steve move his hands away from Mr. Brand, which shows how paranoid they are about homosexuals despite Russell Brand not even being actually gay. At the end of the interview, Russell first shakes Timothy’s hand and asks if he could give him a hug but as expected, Timothy says no and tries to get away from Russell. He does the same thing to Steve but allows Russell to pat him in the back. This shows that there are different ways on how anti-LGBT people react or behave; some are more serious and conservative while others are still firm with their beliefs but are more tolerant.
Anti-gay people are usually perceived as those who put importance to tradition and have very conservative values. According to them, God made man and woman to be partners and not man with another man or a woman with another woman. They believe that a man should fulfill his duties and responsibilities as a man and a woman should fulfill her duties as a woman. They strongly believe in upholding the tradition and not deviating from the norms.
A regular day of a homophobic probably wouldn’t be any different from a pro-gay person. That person would probably just live like any one of us. However, of course, these assumptions can drastically change if a homophobic encounters a homosexual throughout his or her day. Homophobes have “prejudices against homosexuals,” meaning, homophobes are quick with their judgements against these homosexuals. In some cases, these judgements can be verbally or even physically brutal. They say some homophobes cannot even control their own prejudices anymore, and end up living his or life involuntarily hating on homosexuals. Homophobia is like any other phobia, and sometimes, people don’t even know why they have these prejudices against homosexuals. However ultimately, whether these homophobes intentionally judge these homosexuals or not, they are still an ordinary person like anyone else, and like any other homosexual.
To relate this in one of our discussions in class, we talked about religion and secularization and how it talks about the decline of religious beliefs. With that, we realized that the acceptance of homosexuality today shows somehow a hint of secularization happening in our country. Moreover, as we imitated our identities and looked at it at a sociological perspective, there was this feeling of dominance of us anti-gays over the gays themselves. This feeling just shows the presence of Social conflict and how our society still revolves around a certain hierarchy. With some of our signs saying “Homo Go Home” and “God Hates Fags”, these just goes to show how our identities produce an inequality and complete dominance over the gays.
With the amount of homosexual friends that we loved so dearly, it was quite frightening for us to partake in this role of being-anti gay because even though we strongly disbelieved in our protests, we were afraid that the statements we used might still offend them greatly. Also, many homosexuals, are known to have fiery personalities, and we knew there was a possibility that we would get to a point where they would argue with us, and honestly, we didn’t know if we were prepared for that situation to happen. But surprisingly, as we protested literally right in front of the dollhouse, where a few of the members were hanging out, they were agreeing to our statements. One of the students hanging out there, named Rica Solomon, kept repeating “Yes! I’m going to hell! Homosexuality is a sin!” and they would just laugh altogether with him. But then there was a certain sarcastic tone in his voice that hinted that he was really pissed off at us and it was as if he was just mocking our beliefs. At that moment, we already had a feeling that he was getting offended, but we knew that we must continue which was pretty difficult. We interviewed Miko Manaloto, who was one of the dollhouse members that was present during what happened and he said he felt disgusted and angered that there were such close-minded people that had the nerve to do such a thing in front of their home.
Nowadays, our generation has become more accepting to those of the LGBT community. This can be seen in the Ateneo community as majority of the students share a pro-gay mindset. With orgs like Dollhouse we can see how those in the LGBT community are greatly empowered and treated equally. This positive attitude towards homosexuals existing in school made the task more difficult for us as protestors. Many people were appalled by our anti-gay remarks as most people did not share this stand brought about by social control. Thus, when we approached people they were quick to tell us their pro-gay stand and they did not hesitate to disagree with us.
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