By POLO F. IMPERIAL
The second Manny Pacquiao announced that homosexuals are worse than animals who knew how to stick with God-mandated gender roles, I knew that science was in for a shitty day. As a biology major whose passion for science is tempered only by an awareness of the limits of my own intellect, I was so completely disappointed in how easily science could be transfigured magically into a piñata and then beaten savagely into pieces with so much reckless abandon.
We see this in many other instances, such as in the debates on climate change, where science is domesticated like some form of wild predator that could be useful but otherwise dispensable. Yet, as much as scientific facts are indeed stacked high against the celebrity boxer-cum-solon, I believe the matter is more than just Pacquiao’s intelligence or any list of animal species that practice homosexuality. Pacquiao, after all, is a politician who has also previously articulated views more progressive than his stand on same-sex marriage.
In the height of the call for justice for Mary Jane Veloso, Pacquiao flew to Indonesia to visit and comfort the Filipina migrant worker who was duped into carrying a suitcase containing heroin after she lost a job in Malaysia. Pacquiao also advocates for a P125 across-the-board wage hike for workers. Recently, he has thrown his support for overriding President Aquino’s veto of the SSS pension hike.
These contradictions of course can never justify or water down the fact that Pacquiao has one of the poorest performances among all members of the House of Representatives, reporting for work for only a total of four days in 2014–or the fact that his opposition to legal same-sex unions means he think LGBT couples are not entitled to the same civil right as heterosexual couples.
But these contradictions do reveal that Pacquiao—who was poor before he became rich and powerful—is not exempt from the influence of the bigotry promoted by conservative religious institutions, tolerated by an economic elite that benefits from the treatment of the LGBT community as second-class citizens. He is not exempt from the perpetuation of harmful biases as institutionalized by a corrupt government.
For whatever it’s worth, I think Pacquiao’s qualified non-apology proves something very significant, not only for sectors such as the LGBT, but for the vast majority of all of us who will cast our vote in the next election. It isn’t science that will win us concessions. It’s the noise we can make and the numbers we can summon that will force them to listen to our demands. ●
Published in print in the Collegian’s February 16, 2016 issue, with the headline “Bigotry and Biology,” as part of Polo Imperial’s weekly column Larger Than Life.
