Challenge Accepted

To contextualize my anger, read this first.

Oh, where to begin?

So here's the sitch: The Senate is planning to amend an existing anti-discrimination bill to include the LGBT in its roster of individuals to protect. The Catholic church, nay, the CBCP (for it would be disingenuous to lump all the truly faithful with the CBCP) would like to exclude the LGBT for it might open the possibility to the legalization of same sex marriages. Also, by enacting this bill, they claim that the church can be penalized and fined for refusing to marry same sex couples.

To quote Jo Imbong, one of the lawyers of CBCP, "...The third sex, they choose this. How can you give protection to a choice like that?"

Oh, where to begin?

1. Just because the State wants to protect the LGBT from discrimination does not necassarily mean they would legalize same sex marriage. (By the way, this is me not launching into that topic - with much deliberateness and difficulty.)
2. The debate continues as to what "causes" homosexuality. The very hypothesis makes me cringe though as I don't believe that it is actually "caused". I know there are arguments out there about nature and nurture and all that jazz, but for me, it's as simple as this: I know that homosexuality is not a choice because I know that my heterosexuality is not a choice. How the LGBT live their lives, THAT is the choice - that they have every bloody right to make. Homosexuals do not live their lives expressly to annoy people; they live it for themselves.
3. Let's just say, for argument's sake, that it is a choice - should they then be excluded from protection just because they chose to be gay?!? I mean, SERIOUSLY??? I don't discriminate against people who choose Justin Bieber over The Decemberists, because as kadiri as that choice may be to me, by God, I shall defend their rights to have the Bieber Fever!!! 

Years ago, people who were persecuted sought sanctuary from the church. It is horrifying how today, the church is not only denying them sanctuary by turning them away, they are also stripping them of protection, even saying that they should not be protected at all! It's one thing to shun people because, well, you don't like them. It's another to say that the State should not protect them as well.

"Catholic" means universal. Some universal church you want to build there, CBCP. Last I checked, Jesus asked me to love my neighbors, not condemn them. I refuse to believe that my capacity to love and protect the LGBT is greater than God's own love and protect. That's all he ever asked of us, just to love!

I have been educated by some of the best Catholic minds in my country, and they did not educate me - they did not raise me - to feel hatred for the Other. And now you want to institutionalize this, this, this HATRED? Do not hide your bigotry behind your institution.

On some level, I know that this is moot. I'd like to believe that the State is pretty solid on maintaining its separation from the Church (you might like to review that), so this law shall most probably be amended. It has to be amended.

You know what you are, CBCP? You are a bully.

And you know we do to bullies? We kick them in the nuts. We stand up against them and fight back. Challenge accepted, CBCP. Challenge accepted.

If you don't want to stand for LGBT, then fine. Go do whatever the hell it is that you do. But let me protect them. Let. Me. Protect. Them. Let it be legal to do so.