Man of faith

Knuckles crack, bones snap, brittle skin split, veins pulsate, bloodied eyes rupture, and an entire nation howls from a distance to rally behind the man who fights with his fists in the name of God.

He is Emmanuel Dapidran Pacquiao, Manny “Pacman” Pacquiao to his beloved fans. He is the world’s first and only eight-division boxing champion, an elected congressman, a husband, a loving father, and a man of faith whose greatest moral accomplishment is reducing the Philippine crime rate to zero at least a dozen times over the course of his boxing career – none of which involved rigorous and sound legislation.

He is the land’s most revered epic tale: a man who lived the rags-to-riches narrative, worked his way to the top, and did so under the glaring spotlight of MGM Grand. More than anything, he is a valiant defender of the Christian faith, the one faith he imagines to be absolute; an apparent expert on Biblical scriptures, and a staunch believer that homosexuals rank beneath animals. Should you dare live a life disparate from the teachings of the holy book whose words he claims to live by, he will be more than willing to admonish you with his bold rhetoric and ambiguously defined “common sense.” If he only tried his best to save the world.

To him, the only criteria for humanity is normalcy, which is to say that the fundamental rights enshrined in it should only be afforded to those who meet his standards of what is normal. He argues that it is not the sinner that he condemns but the act he conveniently calls “sin.” One can’t help but wonder if his sugar-coated words that seek to compartmentalize the people from the act is a mere attempt at appeasing those he has demonized, or if he has honestly and wantonly forgotten that it is precisely the act that makes them who they are.

That he will win in the next election is a certainty. That he will espouse tangible change is an odd I am willing to bet against. But he will win, anyway, because we are the Philippines, the last Catholic stronghold in this region of the world. And while the CBCP criticizes Manny for converting to Protestantism, they seem to so easily slip into an agreement with every ancient text that bleeds from his mouth while he sits in front of a rolling camera.

This is the Philippines, 98 million strong. It is a country popular for a few things: our pristine, white sand beaches, our remarkable sense of hospitality, and our pious, and often convoluted concept of faith. It is precisely because of this rigid belief system that has prevented the country from legislating free access to contraceptives in spite its ballooning population, a fight that even after being won, had only symbolically served its purpose when its budget was eventually cut.

We beam with pride as we declare that we are the last country in the world that does not recognize divorce; we use homophobic slurs in place of insults; and to us, a woman’s dignity is inversely proportionate to the number of condoms she has purchased in one lifetime. We are quite the Christian nation in that sense.

Challenging an opinion

Respect their faith, they say. This is freedom of religion, of speech, and of their every right to preach. I sometimes wonder why to question something with the earnest intention of understanding it better is often perceived as a form of disrespect. In fact, what better way to respect an opinion than by challenging, criticizing, and examining it? In my experience, only then do we get to ascribe a greater sense of responsibility over the beliefs that we hold.

And yet to investigate the relevance of biblical doctrine in matters of policy-making is to challenge the entire church. It is to spit on God himself. To Manny and his legion of Supporters, we have been squarely forced to choose between the side of God and the side of humanity, and that by choosing God, as we all should, it is their moral obligation to go as far as denying people fundamental rights in the name of glorifying an abstract being.

Still, I do not know exactly which God they intend to glorify. After all, once there was a holy book that spoke of a God who sent his son, part-human and part-divine, into this planet. We called him Christ, a man who spoke of scriptures and walked with peasants, whores, outcasts, and all those who were shunned away. He challenged institutions and immersed in the struggles of those that the institutions oppressed. If that was the true Christian thing to do, then shouldn’t choosing humanity and choosing God be one and the same?

Even then, Manny would have still been vindicated. Go ahead, choose humanity, and therefore choose God. Except he contends that homosexuals are not humans to begin with; they belong to an entirely different tier in the animal kingdom. There are millions of species that roam the earth and yet, according to him and presumably his team of foremost experts in biology, homosexuality exists only in one.

We do not marry dogs, or pigs, or parasites. Homosexuals, therefore, must be treated the same.

Black and white

This isn’t to say that their general worldview is invalid, but it certainly does not stem from a place of compassion, or of “common sense.” We are often confronted with the premise that it takes two healthy human beings who are collectively capable of conjuring children for a union to be sanctified and true. By that definition, I suppose straight, barren people should also be stripped from their right to be married.

Or perhaps to Manny, the rule only applies to the LGBT community because they do not serve any purpose other than to be plot holes, bit players, and comedic devices in the grand narrative of life. God forbid they are unable to crack entertaining jokes, or fashion your hair, or design your clothes, and decorate your households, because what use must they have, then? To Manny and his supporters, they do not espouse emotion, or claim inherent rights. They stand beneath animals, and at a time, even we debated if animals themselves possess feelings or not.

So we should do what the Bible tells us: exterminate those who lay with people of the same sex. Let us forget that the same book forbids us from wearing garments woven out of two different threads. Let us forget that the same book sanctions the selling of young girls into slavery; or insist that those who work on Sabbath and those who plant different crops side by side be stoned to death. These things only foster a set of inconveniences. But let’s fulfill the part that prohibits homosexuality, because they are the inconveniences; abominations in the truest sense.

In Manny Pacquiao’s world, love and marriage operate in black and white; male and female; Adam and Eve. He forgets that there exists a rainbow of colors in between, and an entire array of creations spat from heaven by God himself.

The first time I saw a rainbow, it was a mere specter of light that peered through a stained glass window inside a Cathedral. And what are stained glass windows but shattered pieces of different colors that happen to perfectly fit each other’s corners and edges like jigsaw puzzles? Who are we to deny that art?

Now, rainbows mean something else entirely. It stands for a cause that yearns only for a world to understand and recognize that love comes in many colors. But not in Manny Pacquiao’s world. He is a Christian, and even if to be a Christian means to love each other as you love thyself, Manny will never stand for it. Not a chance, no. If he only tried his best to save the world.

Watch him launch his fists towards his enemies and claim its might to be of divine nature. Listen to him glorify his mother, express nothing but love and compassion for her across TV sets, while actively blocking legislation that seeks to protect the interest of every other Filipino mother. Watch him spew out of context bible verses by day, and exchange intimate dalliances with women other than his own wife at night.

He will condemn those whose crimes spill from every set of hands that are held, lips pressed against each other, and love that seeks nothing but recognition. He is a man of faith, after all. – Rappler.com

 

Alfonso Manalastas is a freelance photographer and writer based in Metro Manila.