Sampaloc Toc

Movie Review: The String

2012-01-31T05:55:00.000+08:00

I recall seeing the trailer for this film at a film festival -- methinks. I don't really recall but its been in my queue for some time. I have never been to the Muslim Francophone world. The setting of this film reminds me of what I think of when I recall stories from Arabian Nights. I can't complain. The "scorching romance" I think may be a bit of an exaggeration, but I think the movie has just enough to be a romance with tender moments. Here is a summary:

After returning from France to his mother's home in Tunisia after the death of his father, 30 year old gay architect Malik cannot fully adjust to the proper cultural mores of his homeland and ends up dabbling in the shadow world of his homeland (more below on this). He also flatly rejects his mother's expectation that he should marry a local woman. Then he meets another alienation Francophone Bilal and through the process of relating, comes to adjust.

On one hand, I see that there is a process of character development going on here. The mother is almost fanatically anti-gay and pushing local women on Malik. Malik goes from totally alienated to being somewhat integrated.

On the other, however, I can see where claims can be made regarding homosexuality and maternal overbearingness. Remember in Hamlet, "The lady doth protest too much, me thinks." Yes, well, this would be an instance of it. The mother turns out to really enjoy the fact that her son is gay. What is her purpose in pushing these local women on him, really? Perhaps she does not want him to have any other woman. She is satisfied with how he resolves this issue (which I won't spoil for you). But the movie does not conclude, I think, with any real development of the mother. Sadly.

Then, there is Malik. I was fascinated by how he rode around a neighborhood on his motorcycle and simply stared at guys until he found one he liked. The guy then walked up to him and said: "Want to take my picture?" On n'est pas sorti de l'auberge! They ended up in some Arabian Night inspired backroom somewhere where Malik gets practically raped by this ruffian. That was one aspect of this shadow world of Tunisia. Then, watching this within a day of citybuoy's post on cousins, Malik sniffs poppers and has sex with his cousin in a dance-club bathroom. His cousin reveals his cousin relation to Malik, Malik then says they will forget they are cousins just that night. The cousin, however, says, this really makes them cousins. You see, the underbelly of the social realm is in a bathroom in a dance-club.

I found the setting and cinematography to be worth the watch alone. Yet, the ethnographic information about Tunisian life was also useful.

Movie Review: Brotherhood

2012-01-30T18:00:00.000+08:00

I was a bit nervous to watch this. I have not been impressed with the neo-Nazi themed movies. But I was surprised. The movie was good at dealing with right wing extremism without making it a caricature of itself. After all, all political extremism can easily be caricatured but why watch a movie about it -- unless its supposed to be of the slap stick comedy variety.

This of course deals with taboos (citing again to citybuoy's segueing cousins post again). Lars is a Danish army man who is discharged. He ends up deciding to dabble in neo-Nazism (of the Danish variety) for reasons that are not too clear. In any event, he impresses the party leadership with his eloquence and ability to think. He is picked for a coveted lifetime membership by the leadership over lifetime member Jimmy's junkie/drunkard brother Patrick -- to Jimmy and Patrick's lives. Lars discloses his association to the neo-Nazis to his mother and is kicked out of the house. The party, for whatever reason, decided to house Lars with Jimmy. Well, as it goes, it only takes so long before Lars and Jimmy begin circling each other until, well, they encircle each other.

The beauty of their affection is so tender and gentle -- in contrast to the harshness and violence of the neo-Nazi community they have adopted or attached themselves to -- is only heightened by the fact that their association with their neo-Nazi community was intended whereas no conscious volition pointed towards their intimacy.

Thus the gentle and tender love that emerges with Lars and Jimmy in opposition to their neo-Nazi perspective becomes the inner conflict of Jimmy -- in part because of how Lars relates to joining or becoming associated with the party. Jimmy becomes the Christ figure who bears the cross of these conflicting perspectives. But will Jimmy be crucified, like Christ? Or will Jimmy become like Odin who being hung upside from the world-tree Yggdrasil for nine days to attain wisdom and thereby retrieved the runes from the Well of Wyrd?

I'll let you watch and make your own comment.

Malaysia court finds A. Ibrahim not guilty of sodomy

2012-01-09T11:02:00.003+08:00

Surprising just about everyone, check out the full story here...

Happy New Year!

2012-01-01T09:30:00.000+08:00

Engulf me with splendor that what I request may be accomplished without impediment.
May the doctrine of the Buddha prosper and flourish.
May all harmful obstacles be pacified.
May the activities of study and practice flourish.
May sickness, famine, agitation and strife be pacified.
May the crops be good and the rains timely and in good measure.
May glory and prosperity flourish.
May central and border countries be happy.
May there be joy, goodness and abundance.
May everything be accomplished just as is wished.

Life Cannot Be Destroyed for Good...

2011-12-19T03:15:00.000+08:00

..neither can history be brought entirely to a halt. - Vaclav Havel (1936-2011)

Playwright, warehouseman, political dissident, former President, Vaclav Havel dies at 75.

The Guilt of Corona...

2011-12-14T15:50:00.003+08:00

You already have the information. All the names and dates are inside your head. What you want, what you really need, is a story.

A decade ago, Estrada was impeached and on trial. The Senate holds the constitutional prerogative to try impeachments of senior political office holders, including the president and chief justice. Yet, the Senate was unable to conclude the trial and people took to the streets with the support of former presidents, the business community and others to force the ouster of Estrada.

This came to pass. And the up-and-coming politician, little Gloria Macapagal-Arroyo was declared President. This act was not constitutional. Regardless of your feelings towards Erap or the hirap, Arroyo did not ascend to the presidency through constitutional means. This was eventually legitimized by the Supreme Court through the legal fiction that Estrada had resigned. Even in my interest to have Estrada out, I turned a blind eye.

But the seeds of the present cancer were planted at that time. Then, Macapagal-Arroyo nurtured these seeds and eventually was able to remain in power for a decade. In the process, she and her group were able to corrode the democratic, political institutions of our country and politicize and corrupt the judicial institution of our country -- which was desperately and slowly trying to rebuild its credibility after two decades of Marcos.

Then, after probably stealing the 2004 presidential election, she apologized for it and spent the next six years plundering the country and enriching herself and her allies. Having packed the Supreme Court with her allies, she put icing on the cake, by making an unconstitutional midnight appointment of Renato Corona, her former chief of staff, as Chief Justice.

Although he whined, Noy Aquino did not challenge this immediately upon taking office. So, when it came time to begin prosecuting the corruption of Arroyo -- which has been very painfully slow -- suddenly the Supreme Court with the Chief Justice at its head, starts moving mountains (and travel documents) for Ms. Arroyo.

Well certainly there are those more responsible than others, and they will be held accountable, but again truth be told, if you're looking for the guilty, you need only look into a mirror.

And that is how we have ended up now, with the situation we have. The purging of the Supreme Court by means of impeachment and removal trials is the only democratic and constitutional process by which the President and Congress have to check the power of an illegitimate, partial, biased and corrupt Supreme Court. No matter how uncomfortable it is, we again find ourselves where we were decade ago in a removal trial of an impeached senior office holder. Right where we began this story. There's no certainty — only opportunity.

Today, instead of the people marching, we have judges canceling their calendars and marching to support Corona as though they were political activists, in violation of their ethical duties as judges and judicial officers to avoid politics and even the appearance of political involvement. We can only see the corrosive effect of ten years of Arroyo lawlessness and the corrosive effect it has had on the judiciary and how that corrosion has affected our judges and our country.

It is to Madame Justice that I dedicate this concerto, in honour of the holiday she seems to have taken from these parts, and in recognition of the impostor that stands in her stead.

Fairness, justice, and freedom are more than words, they are perspectives. So if you've seen nothing, if the crimes of the last government remain unknown to you then I would suggest that you allow this to pass unmarked. But if you see what I see, if you feel as I feel, and if you would seek as I seek, then I ask you to support the constitutional process for removing Corona and other justices who have breached their trust to the public as the final arbiters of the law.

Movie Review: Breakfast with Scot

2011-12-13T09:45:00.001+08:00

This movie is in the genre of stable, established gay couple introduces a young tween or adolescent into the mixture and are forced to confront the various defense mechanisms that have made the stability possible. Here's the official summary:

Eric and his lover, Sam, are pushed into becoming temporary parents to an 11-year-old boy with a fondness for gold chains, lace and the color pink while Eric's brother -- the boy's father -- is out of the country. Neither man ever saw himself as a father, but having such an undeniably colorful child around the house has a funny way of changing their minds.

This movie is no exception except that its budget is probably the biggest of any movie made in this gay subgenre that I've seen. So, its a nice date movie. Light hearted and barely scratches the surface of anything too painful or dramatic. Coincidentally, the boy who plays Scot, Noah Bernett, is exactly what I would think Shelley Duvall would look like if she were a 11 year old gay boy, really.

Hinding hindi ng binabaeng porn-artista si Tagle

2011-12-12T10:30:00.001+08:00

Not a European Transvestite Porn Star

Bishop Tagle's installation will be broadcast on the internet. According to the original press release from the Archdiocese of Manila, you should go to tvmaria.com. See original at Google Webcache here.

Oops! tvmaria.com is a porn site for a European transvestite (hence TV) porn star. Apparently, the correct site for Tagle's installation will be tvmaria.org. See the current press release here which may have changed.

The Curious Case of Mariano del Castillo

2011-12-08T13:00:00.001+08:00

I wonder what GMA was thinking

It was reported yesterday that the impeachment complaint against Associate Justice Mariano del Castillo in the House of Representatives is moving forward. The Committee on Justice determined that the use of the phrases and sentences from a foreign law review article without referring, acknowledging or citing to the other article is an impeachable breach of the public trust.

In the War Rape Victims Case, also known as Isabelita Vinuya et al. v. Executive Secretary et al, del Castillo used a variety of phrases from a law review article from the Yale Journal of International Law written by Evan Criddle and Evan Fox-Descent (both law professors). Although Criddle and Fox- Descent argued in their article that victims of rape during war should be entitled to damages/compensation/restitution, del Castillo used their phrasing and theoretical framework for the opposite conclusion.

The part that caught the attention of the victims and the media was that del Castillo did not cite to or refer to the Criddle and Fox-Descent article in his opinion. In the normal academic world, this would be considered plagiarism. However, in the realm of the law, the purpose of court opinions is to provide the reasoning upon which it makes decisions. Most cases that come before courts are not exactly the same as previous cases and some level of analogizing and referencing to similar, previous cases decided is necessary. When the court gives its opinion, that opinion together with the holding in the case, is the law. No one can claim a copyright on the law and a law giver, whether judicial or legislative, is under no obligation legal or customary to cite to someone who elsewhere formulated their opinion or description when it subsequently becomes law. The point of a judge citing another case is to lend credibility to the present opinion under the doctrine of stare decisis. A foreign law review article can lend no such credibility.

I did not read the Supreme Court's decision regarding del Castillo's absolution of plagiarism but I suspect it was founded on similar ideas and principles since these are basic and fundamental understandings of the law. It would highly be appropriate for lower court justices to make full and adequate citations to scholarly works since they are not ultimately the controlling authority and their citation can help support an affirmation of their decision if appealed. But for the high court, no such citation is necessary. The fact that the justices are not subject to the same rules as those they oversee does smack a bit of medieval monarchical thinking regarding a ruling position.

Nevertheless, in our constitutional scheme, it is not a justices' peers on the Court or armchair jurisprudent commentators like your blogger here, but the people's representatives that get to decide ultimately what conduct constitutes a breach of the public trust at the level of an impeachable offense. It is for this reason that I believe the House of Representatives is fully within its powers to impeach del Castillo and send his impeachment to the Senate for trial and removal. If this occurs, then it becomes clear that in the Philippines, the people have decided that correct citation to the works of others is necessary when one uses their previously formulated phrases for "public trust" reasons -- because plagiarism is generally a breach of trust.

So long as del Castillo is afforded due process, that is, notice of the standards upon which he is to be judged and an opportunity to prepare and present his defense, then the decisions of the House and Senate, ought to be final in the matter.

The impeachment mechanism or a similar process ought to be used to determine with finality the legality of Corona's chief justiceship. An opinion by the Supreme Court need not be the final word on the matter. In my opinion, he would not be able to retreat back to his associate justiceship because of the constructive resignation (ala Estrada) in order to act as the de facto chief justice.

Book Review: The Red Thread, Buddhist Approaches to Sexuality

2011-12-07T12:00:00.002+08:00

Bernard Faure is the Kao Professor in Japanese Religion at Columbia University. He published this book over a decade ago as the first part in a two part series, the other book being The Power of Denial: Buddhism, Purity and Gender.

The first time I read this book I was very young and naive and was mostly confused by it. This is, in part, because unless you have some background in comparative Buddhist Studies and/or a rudimentary knowledge of the various Buddhist spiritual cannons, at some point the extensive use of Sanskrit, Pali, Tibetan, Japanese and Chinese will confuse a reader. It confused me when I read it in 1998.

But I'm glad I chose it again to read. This book has as its mission to survey how Buddhism dealt man to man sex. You see, like the original form of Christianity, the original form of Buddhism was not of this world. Early Christianity and Buddhism both called for a rejection of the family, familial piety, etc.,. The only way to break the bonds of karmic, cyclic existence is to step out of the stream of karma. The easiest way to do this (logically) was to not have children. However, in traditional societies, this is about as abnormal as it gets.

Faure overviews very closely the Vinaya, which are the monastic codes of behavior. You see, while in Christianity, there is one true doctrine and every other school is heretical, schismatic or apostatic, Buddhism is not committed to a unified doctrine. Instead, we distinguish schools primarily by the Vinaya they follow, that is the methods by which they believe one may direct his heart and mind towards enlightenment.

Early Buddhism rejected desire complete as one of the three main causes of cyclic existence. Then came along the great schism in Buddhism between the Southern schools and the Northern schools. I've written a book review about this point in Buddhist and sexuality history elsewhere in this blog. But the book focuses on how Buddhist philosophy was interpreted and understood to reverse what eventually came to be a rejection of the Indian legalism of the older Southern school understanding of sexuality.

Early Buddhism rejected desire. This remains one of the underpinnings of the Southern Buddhist schools. However, the Northern schools (Vietnam, China, Tibet, Bhutan, Nepal, Japan, Korea, Mongolia), Buddhistized the doctrinal rejection of the rejection of desire and said that desire and passion can be used on the path to transcending cyclic existence! It also reincorporated notions of filial piety. The earlier Southern school focus on the individual attaining liberation, the Northern school focused on the individual attaining liberation for the community!

In the written record that Faure reviews, it is in the Northern schools where man to man sexuality explodes. In Japan, it moves to its extreme where Buddhist priests spiritualize and glorify the ritual and institutional sexual abuse and rape of children. This persisted in Japan for over a thousand years and eventually spread into non-religious areas of life (including the samurai and merchant classes). I have written a review of a book about the Tokugawa era homosexual and pederastic traditions in Japan.

Reading this book did make me think more about the extent of institutionalized sexual abuse of young men and boys in Japan over such a long time and how the Buddhist churches in Japan and their association with moral decline (including homosexuality) played such a significant role in the Meiji-era modernization of Japan and its present extreme homophobia.

I was less interested in the Japanese angle on this story as I was about two different facets that the book didn't delve too deeply into. Monastic sexual or non-sexual experience in other Northern schools monasteries (like Tibet and China) and in the other Northern schools, what their advice was to householders (the Buddhist term for lay practitioners). Since the Northern schools changed the nature of the householder and its relationship to liberation (householders could be a valid path toward liberation in the Northern schools, whereas in the Southern schools, householders are neutral since their alms offerings and donations to monasteries is at best, a karma neutralizing activity), the advice of Buddhist monks and abbots takes on a new significance which isn't well explored.

One of the overall themes of the book, which is important, is that various forms of homosexuality flourished, in part, because of the patriarchical and misogynistic approaches to gender adopted by the early Buddhist community -- and part of the ambivalence the Buddha demonstrated on the question of gender.

The version I read was a 324 page paperback published by Princeton University Press (October 26, 1998), ISBN-13: 978-0691059976. It is written in English. The lowest price I found online was used at abebooks.com.

Movie Review: Let's Go To Prison

2011-12-06T13:30:00.000+08:00

When I put this movie in the queue to watch, I didn't think much of it except that it was likely to be another gay comedy. I had to keep asking myself where the "gay & lesbian" part of the movie was. Here is the summary:

John Lyshitski gets his chance for sweet revenge when Nelson Biederman, the son of the judge who sent Lyshitski to jail, is wrongfully convicted of a crime he didn't commit and sentenced to time in the slammer. The scheming Lyshitski deliberately gets tossed back in the clink, where he does everything in his power to ensure that his new cellmate -- Biederman -- experiences all the wonders of prison life.

I had assumed that this would be a film about gay sex in prison, but actually, that's just something that you get teased with. I'm still trying to figure out the moral of the story here or non-moral, that the case may be. Perhaps its that love prevails over the power drive? It's light and makes fun of the American criminal justice system.

Book Review: Colonizing Hawaii

2011-12-05T13:25:00.000+08:00

Sally Engle Merry is a professor of Anthropology at New York University. She wrote this book over a decade ago regarding how the cultural power of law transformed native Hawaiian understandings of sexuality and gender.

I can't tell you how many books I've read in my life where there are claims that colonialism remakes gender and sexuality in its image upon the bodies of the natives. Ngugi wo Thiongo's famous quote from Decolonizing the Mind, for example, states: "the night of the sword and the bullet were followed by the morning of the chalk and blackboard."

It's something that is so obvious. Yet, it is an area that is woefully understudied and under analyzed. I have reviewed a few of books that in various ways scratch the surface. Merry, however, goes right to the heart of it. She goes through meticulously how the cultural significance of the law and religion were used, in a series of historical accidents almost, by those in power that created the conditions upon which the law courts of the Hawaiian kingdom became the ultimate site where native Hawaiians would end up if they could not conform to the colonial understandings of sexuality and gender.

When the law courts weren't forcing immigrant laborers back into their slave-like conditions, they were convicting native Hawaiians on adultery prosecutions. Through this process, sexuality and gender were regulated until the new rules of gender and sexuality and privacy and concealment and shame were firmly in place. Then, the adultery prosecutions disappeared. There is also an extended look at how a patriarchal American system of law dealt with spousal violence and the role of women in the ideal colonized family.

One of the benefits of Merry's work is that both the colonizer and the colonized in Hawai'i were adamant and diligent writers documenting anything and everything. In the Philippines, however, we have primarily the Spanish and mestizo elite who wrote and as Neil Garcia and others have noted, the written record is woefully inadequate which would make Merry's method significantly more difficult for sexuality studies in the Philippines. Filomeno Aguilar Hr was able to use scant written record to construct the colonization of Negros in the late 19th and early 20th century -- but the discussion on cockfighting and spirituality can hardly be considered a meaningful inquiry into gender and sexuality.

The version I read was a 364 page paperback published by Princeton University Press (December 21, 1999), ISBN-13: 978-0691009322. It is written in English. The lowest price I found online was used at amazon.com.

Movie Review: Strapped

2011-12-04T23:59:00.000+08:00

I was not expecting much from this movie. Strapped idiomatically refers to several things: not having money, having a gun, or having a large cock. The summary was provided as follows:

A handsome young hustler moves almost effortlessly through the world, modifying his persona to fit the needs of each client, even though it leaves him with little self-knowledge. That changes during one night of unusual encounters. After trysting with a shy Russian, the young man tries to leave the apartment building but is stymied by its maze-like structure and meets a string of quirky inhabitants who teach him about himself.

But was I totally surprised! This was definitely a thinking movie.

The encounter with the Russian was so-so but when he leaves and begins the labyrinth journey to the end. There is the one apartment scene where I feel like if I had dropped acid, I would have been at one of the coffeebabies inuman parties in the land of Oz. There were also a few gay Ernest Hemingway types characters in my life (although I never slept with any of them). There were the crazy bi-married father/silahis types.

And then, of course, the last apartment he encounters presented me with the two primary fragments of my own adolescent self: the tortured lonely poet romantic who has spiritualized intimacy to an ascetic non-sexual extreme and the hustler who has dismissed intimacy to a hedonistic sexual extreme.

But what comes of such an encounter? I'll save the ending for you to watch. Maybe you will feel sad? Maybe you will be happy? But this is definitely a date/cuddle-up-with-partner movie.

Manila Pride March

2011-12-01T15:45:00.000+08:00

(from the 2009 Pride March)

December 3, 2011

Pride March

Meeting Place: Remedios Circle, Malate, Manila

Registration: 1:00pm - 4:00pm

Parade: 4:15pm

Program: 5:00pm-8:00pm, Orosa Nakpil

Task Force Pride, a non-profit network of lesbians, gays, bisexuals and transgenders (LGBT) groups will organize the 17th Annual Pride March in Manila. The aim of the march is to gather different LGBT groups, allies and individuals in solidarity, as well as provide positive visibility to the community.

This year's theme, "Pride of the Orient", recalls the community's achievements with regard to advancing LGBT human rights, such as... organizing the first pride march in Asia in 1994 and the formation of Ladlad party list, the only LGBT-oriented party list in the world, and extensive HIV/AIDS Awareness campaigns nationwide .

"Pride of the Orient" calls on LGBT Filipinos to reclaim these milestones and look forward to more victories they've yet to achieve.

For Organizations, please confirm in this link:
http://taskforcepride.blogspot.com/2011/11/2011-confirmation-form-organizations.html

For Individuals, please confirm in this link:
http://taskforcepride.blogspot.com/2011/11/2011-confirmation-form-individuals.html

(If you have difficulties with the links provided, please reply to this email with your Name, Organization's Name, and Contact Number.)

Please check the TFP page regularly for updates on the program line-up and the venue.

For more information you can visit this FB Event Page:
http://www.facebook.com/event.php?eid=241089652610923

Visit the official website:
http://www.taskforcepride.blogspot.com/

email us at:
taskforcepride@gmail.com

or SMS us at 09163089903 (Globe), 09333049795 (Sun)

Thanks, and see you all on December 3, 2011 at the Pride March!

Jon M. Van Dyke, 68

2011-11-30T23:59:00.002+08:00

Jon M. Van Dyke, 68, an internationally respected human rights attorney and law professor, who sued the Marcoses in US courts on behalf of Filipino human rights abuse victims during martial law and through the end of Marcos' regime, died in his sleep while traveling in Australia. After obtaining one of the largest judgments ever in a class action law suit in US history for martial law victims, Van Dyke and his widow Sherry Broder, spent the following 20 years searching for hidden assets of the Marcos family to pay the victims and fighting the Philippine government which would make claims to the found monies whenever assets were found. Van Dyke was also a learned scholar on the law of the seas.

I Still Love You Piolo

2011-11-29T10:55:00.001+08:00

Dear PJ,

Since everyone is coming out with their truth, I will offer mine. You made it late onto my crush radar. Actually, despite playing Jules in Dekada 70 and finding myself attracted to the character in your performance, I barely batted an eyelash for you there and even less so elsewhere. Marvin Agustin was the main crush of my late adolescence and twenties and I never understood why you had such a fan base. (I recall one discussion with my lola, one of your early and staunch fans, but I still couldn't understand.)

However, things started to change though when I saw Dreamboy. Then Sa Piling Mo and Walang Kapalit. There was something in the performance of betrayal, unrequited love and bucking social norms that seemed so real in your theatrical expression. I became captivated. Then, I lived through Lobo and the tragedy and pain of Noah Ortega of not being able to understand clearly friend from friend, light from light, true love from true love -- clouded by the betrayal of those closest to him.

I found the whole sex video scandal with that guy that looked like you to be funny. At first I was a little unsettled by the Lolit Solis fiasco. I thought your handlers were pushing the envelope too far. But then as it played out, it was a little bit funny and so I saw it as it was comedy. (However, I marginally remained concerned for the potential of leveraging too much risk and remaining unconscious of the part of you that no longer wishes to be bound to your tightly manicured persona.)

Then I happened upon a picture of you with Iñigo, your son -- long after it had been taken. Suddenly, these feelings of mine for you came into sharp focus. This photograph of you with Iñigo was not taken by your handlers at ABS-CBN but instead showed a side of you most of us never get to see. All was revealed. The painful truth that sits like the purloined letter in the minister's study was there with the deep and genuine love for your son.

Your appeal is in part because of the beauty and grace you put on such tremendous suffering over an incredible inner conflict. Perhaps now is the time to transcend the inner conflict and emerge as a new consciousness that is able to integrate the two seemingly opposing points of view. Or perhaps, it is not the time and a shadowy figure like a flash of light will enter the room, take the lamp, throw it into the river and jump off the azotea into the darkness. What will be your real legacy to Iñigo?

Whatever you decide, I will support it. Because, I understand you, PJ.

Movie Review: A Very British Gangster

2011-11-27T08:30:00.002+08:00

You may be wondering what a documentary about a British mafia type is doing in a movie review on my blog. I'll get to that momentarily.

The documentary is about Dominic Noonan who is a well-known ethnically Irish criminal gangster in Manchester, England. He allows the filmmaker total access to how he lives his daily life. He and the police are constantly playing cat and mouse. Also, which is strange and unusual, he acts as a neighborhood mediator and judge. There is one scene where we watch how he mediates a problem that the police are unable to resolve, makes a decision on the case and then moves on ot the next thing. It was precisely what all the books and movies about New York gangsters hinted at. That gangsters acted like para-governments, para-militias, para-law-enforcement, para-social work department.

In any event, Dominic constantly had an entourage of young men around him -- in addition to his young son and nephew. Then the shocker comes. The filmmaker asks him if he has a touch of lavender in him. I wondered if that was some kind of expression for something in England. Dominic clarified. He's 100% gay. Yes, he had a kid. But he's totally gay. So, the documentary is a documentary about a notorious GAY gangster. Apparently, he's not the first British gay gangster. Another well known gay British gangster was Ronnie Kray.

I wished that there had been more focus on that part of his personal life. Has he a partner? Does he sleep with his young men who follow him around? Does he sleep with hustlers? What does his love life look like?

It's an otherwise interesting look into criminality in Manchester, Britain among ethnic Irish working class gangsters -- who are gay.

Movie Review: King and the Clown 왕의 남자

2011-11-25T14:05:00.001+08:00

I saw this movie about 5 years ago just after it was shown in Taiwan from a pirated copy of a theatrical release. The most evil of evil ways to watch a film. But it did not appear on DVD for many more years and had I waited, I would have never have seen it. So I don't feel so bad.

This movie follows the tragic gay theme of Korean movies. Please review my review of the touching Bungee Jump of their Own.

This movie revolves around this character, androgynous lady-boy, Gong-gil, who along with Jang-san, are clowns. That is they go from village to village pantomiming and acting in comedic skits making fun at society. One day they were doing a skit mocking the king and were promptly arrested by the military. In Korea of the 1500s, there was a crazy king named King Yeonsan. And that's who they were mocking.

In jail, Jang-san is able to persuade someone to let them perform for the King. If they make him laugh, they can be pardoned. If they don't, they can be executed. They are so nervous in their performance that they aren't funny but shortly before being executed, they are able to execute one last skit which makes the King laugh. Of course, it also happens that the King has a major crush on Gong-gil (played by Lee Jun-ki).

Lee Jun-ki when he's not in drag

Well, I won't repeat the whole story or the ending, but I can suggest that its in the same ending-genre as Bungee Jump of their Own. And it's a true love story with all the epic tragedy -- there are tyrants, crazies, blinding, scheming concubines, etc.,. In some ways, its like the 2000 version of Chunhyangdyun minus the pansori storyteller. I have not watched this movie recently but someone mentioned that they were looking for a copy and it reminded me that I ought to write a review. This is totally a date/cuddle-up-and-watch movie. Hopefully you can find it and watch it.

Book Review: Buddhism, Sexuality and Gender

2011-11-24T16:49:00.000+08:00

José I. Cabezón is the XIV Dalai Lama Endowed Chair in Tibetan Buddhism and Cultural Studies in the Department of Religious Studies at University of California Santa Barbara. He was formerly Associate Professor of Philosophy of Religion at Iliff School of Theology. He edited this book about twenty years ago.

Although politics and religion are always deeply intertwined, for Buddhism, there has never been a central figure or a group of central figures. The development of Buddhism has been much more fragmented and rhizomatic. It is true that there are a few philosophically consistent groupings: the Theravada, the Mahayana, the Vajrayana and the Pureland sects. However, about every variable you could consider in terms of variation in schools, varies so widely within and among the four I just mentioned that the designation may be considered just geographic by another name.

Okay, I remember reading this book as a teenager and being confused. And so I don't know that I would recommend reading this whole book unless you have some vague background in Buddhist philosophy, history or similar because sometimes it gets technical and can be confusing. There are several important themes which any given reader will likely not be interested in. For a general reader wanting to know more about "Buddhism, Sexuality and Gender" I'd pick just a few chapters.

First, the chapter "Attitudes toward Women and the Feminine in Early Buddhism" by Alan Spoonberg is a concise treatment of how the textual ambiguity in the Buddha's pronouncements regarding gender equality (there is very little) eventually allowed patriarchy to slip back into the religious community and tragically, today, only in Chinese Buddhist religious communities are their fully ordained nuns and nuns from other sects who go to China, Hongkong or Taiwan for full ordination are looked at suspiciously and derisively, at best, and as apostates, at worst. (This is one area where the monastic hierarchy in many Buddhist communities really could work on improvement.)

Second, the chapter "The Gender Symbolism of Kuan-yin Boddhisattva" by Barbara Reed was also a concise explanation for how one of the few well known Buddhist icons in the world (the other being the historical Buddha and the other Amida Buddha) went from being a boyish young man to a woman. This bodhisattva is Avalokiteshvara, the bodhisattva of compassion is also known as Kuan-yi, Kannon, 観音, Quán Thế Âm, Chenrezig, 관세음보살, and Жанрайсиг. HH XIV Dalai Lama is the reincarnation of the bodhisattva/buddha. Avalokiteshvara is Buddhism's first transgender Buddha, and a very popular one. This chapter gives a very concise explanation of the how and why.

Third, the chapter "Kukai and the Tradition of Male Love in Japanese Buddhism" by Paul Gordon Schalow. I find the present normative homophobia of Japanese and diasporic Japanese communities to be so curious. This is true, especially, because Japan has such a long, rich and proud historical tradition of gay sex. Of course, for those really interested in this topic, there is the book Male Colours. In any event, the chapter gets to the point. Just consider these two Japanese gay sex poems:

White snow on a mountain peak
turns to pure water on the rocks
and finally flows down.

I gaze up at the distant top of a cedar tree;
the wind blows strong,
and even the cedar bends.

The version I read was a 264 page paperback published by SUNY Press (December 13, 1991), ISBN-13: 978-0791407585. It is written in English. The lowest price I found online was used at abebooks.com.

Is the COMELEC/DOJ panel constitutional?

2011-11-22T00:21:00.002+08:00

GMA's attorneys have argued in the press that the COMELEC/DOJ panel is not constitutional because COMELEC must be independent according to the constitution. I thought I would examine this issue and develop an opinion before the Supreme Court ruled. I have not read GMA's briefs or motions nor have I read the government's position. Instead, I am answering the question of whether the COMELEC/DOJ panel is constitutional.

I

The original law, Batas Pambansa Blg. 881, provided at Section 265:

Section 265. Prosecution. - The Commission shall, through its duly authorized legal officers, have the exclusive power to conduct preliminary investigation of all election offenses punishable under this Code, and to prosecute the same. The Commission may avail of the assistance of other prosecuting arms of the government: Provided, however, That in the event that the Commission fails to act on any complaint within four months from his filing, the complainant may file the complaint with the office of the fiscal or with the Ministry of Justice for proper investigation and prosecution, if warranted.

This provision was subsequently amended by Republic Act No. 9369 to read as follows:

"SEC. 265. Prosecution. - The Commission shall, through its duly authorized legal officers, have the power, concurrent with the other prosecuting arms of the government, to conduct preliminary investigation of all election offenses punishable under this Code, and prosecute the same."

It is on this basis that the government established the so-called "joint panel" to investigate the election sabotage case of GMA. Let us next look at the requirements of COMELEC in the constitution:

Art. IX, Sec 1 of the 1987 Constitution states: "The Constitutional Commissions, which shall be independent, are the ... Commission on Elections[.]" What does that independence mean?

If read in relationship to the other common provisions of the Constitutional Commissions, independence includes:

Commissioners may not hold any other office, manage or control any business or practice any profession. (Section 2, Art IX-A) The salary of the Commissioners cannot be decreased during a commissioner's term of office. (Section 3, Art IX-A) Commissions have the sole and exclusive responsibility for the management of their offices. (Section 4, Art IX-A) Commissions enjoy fiscal autonomy (Section 5, Art IX-A) Commissions have the authority to establish its rules of practice (Section 6, Art IX-A)

It does not appear that working together on a preliminary investigation violates any of the above. Further, COMELEC voted under its ordinary procedure without any member of the Department of Justice to proceed to file and prosecute the case.

The original law BP 881 was passed well before the 1987 Constitution. The 1987 Constitution included under Section 2(6), Art IX-C, the constitutional power of COMELEC to prosecute election crimes, but it did not grant that power to COMELEC to the exclusion of the executive and it did not have the effect of repealing Section 265, BP 881. The original law gave COMELEC exclusive preliminary investigatory jurisdiction for 4 months. The amended law changed the jurisdiction to investigate and prosecute election crimes concurrently to COMELEC and the Executive Branch, which is consistent with the constitution.

II

Finally, GMA signed R.A. No. 9369 into law in 2007. She ought to be legally estopped from taking the position that it is now unconstitutional. Legal estoppel partakes of the positive rules of judicial procedure based on manifest justice and to a greater or lesser degree, on considerations of orderliness, regularity and expedition of litigation. In other words, a party must not be permitted to maintain inconsistent positions or to take a position in regard to a matter which is directly contrary to or inconsistent with one previously assumed by him, at least where he had, or was chargeable with, full knowledge of the facts, and another will be prejudiced by this action.

If GMA were permitted to maintain that a law that she signed into law in 2007 is unconstitutional, she would undermine the very purpose of the office of the President and promote manifest injustice. Under Sec 27(1), Art VI provides the President can veto a bill and return it to Congress. GMA did not do that. If the bill became law over her veto, she could have filed a complaint for declaratory relief seeking to have the law deemed unconstitutional under Rule 63. She did not. Instead, two election cycles have passed since she signed the bill into law and now challenges it when it is being used to prosecute her criminal misconduct during the first of those two elections.

If she admits that it was unconstitutional and she abrogated her duties to veto and subsequently challenge it in court, then she would have to admit that she violated her duty as a public officer. Section 1, Art XI states: "Public office is a public trust. Public officers and employees must at all times be accountable to the people, serve them with utmost responsibility, integrity, loyalty, and efficiency, act with patriotism and justice, and lead modest lives."

III

For these reasons, Section 265 of B.P. Blg 881 as amended by R.A. No. 9369 which permits the COMELEC to conduct preliminary investigations in cooperation with executive departments, with concurrent powers to investigate and prosecute electoral crimes, does not offend the constitution. The court should make this ruling for the public good as an exception to the prudential doctrine otherwise that GMA is legally estopped from raising the question of R.A. No. 9369's constitutionality.

IV (Update)

I have since learned, by the Supreme Court denying the issuance of the TROs, that GMA is not raising the issue of unconstitutionality but instead her husband and Abalos. Since Mike Arroyo was not subject to the filing of the complaint for election sabotage, his petition should be dismissed since he no longer has standing to challenge the constitutionality of the COMELEC/DOJ joint investigation. What is standing?

"Standing is a special concern in constitutional law because in some cases suits are brought not by parties who have been personally injured by the operation of law or by official action taken, but by concerned citizens, taxpayers or voters who actually sue in the public interest. Hence the question in standing is whether such parties have ‘alleged such a personal stake in the outcome of the controversy as to assure that concrete adverseness which sharpens the presentation of issues upon which the court so largely depends for illumination of difficult constitutional questions." Anti-Graft League of the Philippines v. Romero, G.R. No. 97787. August 1, 1996, citing Baker v. Carr, 369 U.S. 186 (1962).

Because it has been four years and two elections since the passage of Republic Act No. 9369 and many years since the passage of B.P. Blg. 881 and the 1987 Constitution that if Mike Arroyo had standing as a taxpayer or voter to challenge the law, he would be barred by the doctrine of laches. That is the doctrine that a claimant may not sit on his rights. One of the reasons for this doctrine is to prevent people from gambling with public resources and when dissatisfied with the results of public processes, challenge some government act that could have been challenged earlier saving the public from committing its resources to the challenged act.

Then the question is whether the petition remaining of Abalos is properly before the Supreme Court? I say no.

"Plainly, the Constitution contemplates that the inferior courts should have jurisdiction in cases involving constitutionality of any treaty or law, for it speaks of appellate review of final judgments of inferior courts in cases where such constitutionality happens to be in issue." J. M. Tuason & Co. v. Court of Appeals (3 SCRA 696)

To entertain the merits of a petition like Abalos' in the Supreme Court would signal to those wealthy individuals under investigation by prosecutors to make sure to file petitions with the Supreme Court first before criminal charges are filed to avoid having to be subjected to the ordinary course of justice.

For this reason, I would remand the surviving petitions to the Pasay Regional Trial Court for proper disposition in relationship to the actual controversy at issue.

An Idiot's Guide to How GMA was Arrested

2011-11-19T14:30:00.002+08:00

October 1, 2011
GMA Dr. Julia Gopez-Cervantes issued a medical certificate saying GMA has "metabolic bone disease and osteoporosis due to hypoparathyroidism with electrolyte imbalance and Vitamin D deficiency. Cervantes further stated that "barring any complications, [GMA] should be fully recovered from her spine surgery in six to eight months. Her metabolic bone disease needs lifetime maintenance treatment."

October 19, 2011
The House of Representatives issued an amended travel authority for GMA for the period October 22-December 5 to the US and Germany and to include Singapore, Spain and Italy, to seek medical consultations with specialists and also to go to two NGO type conferences.

October 20, 2011
GMA filled a written request before the DOJ for the issuance of an allow-departure order (ADO)

October 21, 2011
Arroyo submitted an affidavit listed down only three destinations – Singapore, Germany and Austria.

October 24, 2011
Arroyo again filled a written request before the DOJ for the issuance of ADO.

October 27, 2011
Another watchlist order was issued against the former president, this time, based on two electoral sabotage complaints against her.

October 28, 2011
DOH Sec. Ona visited GMA at her Quezon City resident to determine whether her condition was life threatneing and whether her health will deteriorate if she is not permitted to go abroad. Ona later reported to DOJ that "Mrs. Arroyo is recuperating reasonably well".

November 2, 2011
GMA submits a detailed itinerary to DOJ showing that she intends to seek medical consultation in Singapore (October 24, 2011, October 31, 2011 and November 8, 2011), Germany (November 17, 2011) and Spain (November 14, 2011)

November 8, 2011
The Arroyo camp petitions the Supreme Court to nullify the watchlist order against them and DOJ Circular No. 41 which was promulgated by Arroyo's administration as unconstitutional.

November 8, 2011
DOJ denied the request of Arroyo for an allow-departure order (ADO)

November 15, 2011
The Supreme Court issued a Temporary Restraining Order (TRO) on the implementation of the department circular no. 41 and the watchlist orders, voting 8-5, without giving the government a chance to argue its side. GMA submitted affidavits claiming she had to go abroad because of an medical emergency while also submitting affidavits by her physicians and surgeons saying that barring any unforeseen circumstances, Arroyo should be fully recovered in 6 months. Read Justice Sereno's excellent dissent.

The TRO includes three conditions: No. 1, they must post a PHP 2M bond; No. 2, they must appoint someone to accept legal process for them; and No. 3, they must register with the consulates of the Republic when abroad. The Supreme Court orders the cashier's office to remain open for an additional hour. GMA is able to post the PHP 2M bond. GMA also submits a power of attorney which is defective for purposes of Condition No. 2. However, the Clerk of Court is rushed to certify the condition is met.

Later that night, GMA arrives at NAIA in an ambulance with her neckbrace and a surgical mask with tickets for every flight leaving the country. Immigration officials bar GMA from leaving the country under order of Secretary de Lima. Arroyo then goes to St. Luke's.

November 16, 2011
The former president postponed her planned trip today citing fluctuating blood pressure. It is not known whether she decided not to take her blood pressure medication on this day to create new medical emergencies.

November 17, 2011
Arroyo petitioned the Supreme Court to order the DOJ and BI to allow her to leave the country. GMA again postponed her trip.

November 18, 2011
After failing to receive counter-affidavits from GMA, COMELEC files charges of election sabotage in the Pasay Regional Trial Court. COMELEC requests a hold order for travel.

The Supreme Court meets en banc and re-affirms the TRO issuance. However, they vote and agree that the Condition No. 2 has not been met and the TRO is not effective. The Court also orders deLima to show cause why she should not be held in contempt of court. SC Spokesperson Midas Marquez informs the press that the TRO is effective. But in a subsequently published opinion of Justice Sereno, is admonished for misinforming the public. Read Justice Sereno's opinion here.

The COMELEC case is raffled and the judge issues an arrest warrant for the individuals charged, including GMA. GMA is subsequently arrested at St. Luke's by PNP and put under hospital arrest with armed guards.

Arroyo et al v. the People

2011-11-16T07:35:00.002+08:00

GMA drums up support among supporters
as she attempts to flee the country in neckbrace, wheelchair and surgical mask

As many may be familiar with now, GMA won a temporary restraining order from the Supreme Court which, in effect, allows her to leave the country without any obstacle. However, this order has apparently not been served on the DOJ or the Solicitor General and so the Bureau of Immigration and the Civil Aviation Authority did not allow GMA and her husband to leave the country last night, amid much fan fare.

I
The order does not reach the merits of GMA's claim that she has a constitutional right to travel in realms beyond the reach of our government. Rather, a TRO is issued if there is imminent irreparable harm by maintaining the status quo until a decision on the merits can be rendered. In this case, however, the court provided no explanation or recitation of facts that would lead them to conclude that they were facing imminent irreparable harm. There are three words there, each with legal significance. First, there must be harm. Second, it must be irreparable. That means, that if the harm were to occur, it could not be adequately compensated for by a monetary award or some other relief at the end of the case. Third, it must be imminent. It is not sufficient to say that sometime in the undefined future, there will occur irreparable harm. That must occur at this moment.

It is difficult to say that GMA will face irreparable harm because, first, the Court has not been given the opportunity to weigh the expert medical evidence for and against GMA's claimed condition. Second, the government has offered to pay at its expense the travel costs for GMA's physicians of choice to come to the Philippines to conduct tests, evaluations and medical procedures. You see, this offer itself chips away at both the imminent requirement and irreparable requirement.

I have read elsewhere from defenders of GMA and Corona that is was a moment for the rule of law and the Supreme Court has upheld the fundamentals of separate branches of government, etc., etc.,. But I would like to point to a decision rendered by the Supreme Court just a few months ago quashing a TRO issued against GMA by a lower trial court for failing to meet the standards of preliminary injunctive relief.

First, please review the Supreme Court order on Raissa Robles blog. Next, please consider G.R. No. 177130 (2011), Ermita v. Aldecoa-Delorino. In that case, petrochemical companies sued GMA for a 2006 executive order implementing tariff reductions on plastic imports and received a preliminary injunction by the lower court, by Judge Aldecoa-Delorino. GMA appealed to the Supreme Court the issuance of the preliminary injunction. The Supreme Court (the same GMA 8 voting in favor) wrote:

It is well to emphasize that the grant or denial of a writ of preliminary injunction in a pending case rests on the sound discretion of the court taking cognizance thereof. In the present case, however, where it is the Government which is being enjoined from implementing an issuance which enjoys the presumption of validity, such discretion must be exercised with utmost caution. Executive Secretary v. Court of Appeals, enlightens:

In Social Security Commission v. Judge Bayona, we ruled that a law is presumed constitutional until otherwise declared by judicial interpretation. The suspension of the operation of the law is a matter of extreme delicacy because it is an interference with the official acts not only of the duly elected representatives of the people but also of the highest magistrate of the land.
And following jurisprudence, these requisites must be proved before a writ of preliminary injunction, be it mandatory or prohibitory, will issue:

(1) The applicant must have a clear and unmistakable right to be protected, that is a right in esse;

(2) There is a material and substantial invasion of such right;

(3) There is an urgent need for the writ to prevent irreparable injury to the applicant; and

(4) No other ordinary, speedy, and adequate remedy exists to prevent the infliction of irreparable injury. (emphasis supplied)a1a

It is thus ineluctable that for it to be entitled to the writ, the [Plaintiff] must show that it has a clear and unmistakable right that is violated and that there is an urgent necessity for its issuance. That [Plaintiff] had cause of action and the standing to interpose the action for prohibition did not ipso facto call for the grant of injunctive relief in its favor without it proving its entitlement thereto.

Transfield Philippines, Inc. v. Luzon Hydro Corporation, illuminates on the right of a party to injunctive relief:

Before a writ of preliminary injunction may be issued, there must be a clear showing by the complaint that there exists a right to be protected and that the acts against which the writ is to be directed are violative of the said right. It must be shown that the invasion of the right sought to be protected is material and substantial, that the right of complainant is clear and unmistakable and that there is an urgent and paramount necessity for the writ to prevent serious damage. Moreover, an injunctive remedy may only be resorted to when there is a pressing necessity to avoid injurious consequences which cannot be remedied under any standard compensation.

The Supreme Court did not go through any of this analysis. Instead, it did the apparent opposite of what it reversed the lower court for doing and has given GMA and her family a free pass. And, in this case, it is not clear why GMA can't wait a week or two before leaving the country to allow oral arguments to be had. What is the rush?

Also the remedy seems so extreme. The language of the restraining order seems to enjoin the power of the DOJ and Bureau to stop ANYONE from leaving the country. So, the response to the claim that GMA will suffer irreparable harm by not being allowed to leave the country is to allow everyone and anyone to leave the country.

II

While in modern times, we tend to see the courts as powerful institutions, judicial power is founded on credibility and reputation. Courts do not have armies. Courts do not raise revenue and maintain treasuries. If the court ordered something and no one listened to them, the court would have no way to enforce its decision. Instead, they simply have the power of persuasion and influence. There is a number of ways courts' build their credibility and reputation. One is by consistency and following their own precedent.

As we see, in this instance, however, the only thing consistent about the prior law on preliminary injunctions and the present case, is that Gloria Macapagal Arroyo can do whatever she wants. The previous cases on preliminary injunction by substantially the same Supreme Court have a long and stable history regarding the powers of the court and the standards by which they will issue injunctive relief. This present case does not do that at all.

And this is the danger. At the moment the DOJ is not following the order because they have not been legally notified of the order. That will work or the moment. However, when the DOJ and solicitor general are served, then they will be faced with a different set of issues.

Do they ignore the order of the Supreme Court? That would trigger a constitutional crisis of epic proportions -- much bigger than the mindless interference of the Supreme Court in the impeachment of Merceditas Gutierrez. That is one possible solutions. But there are others.

Ultimately, this decision which fails in every respect to comport with the Supreme Court's own prior law and utterly fails to provide any reasons for its decision invites the government and the public to ignore its order. Corona need lecture no one but himself and his peers regarding the lack of respect for the Supreme Court.

III

First, the Department of Justice and Bureau of Immigration could revoke GMA and Mike Arroyo's passports and require them to follow the process to obtain new passports. By my calculation, this would delay any departure by at least a month. They could also require that the DFA not allow any part of the process to be expedited.

Second, the DOJ and Bureau could issue new circulars and new watchlist orders on GMA and Mike Arroyo. The present preliminary injunction only relates to Circular and watchlist orders.

Third, the Department of Tourism could refuse to accept payment for the travel tax and allow her to leave and require under Section 5 of P.D. No. 1183 that GMA establish her capacity to pay the government all of its costs in having her extradicted if she refuses to return, from countries that do not have extradition treaties.

There are also many regulations and rules that provide criminal and civil penalties for not being obeyed. If the DOJ needs more time to investigate GMA before charging her with a crime, they might as well charge her with these many small bailable offenses. While it is true that she is allowed bail, the process to be bailed takes some time. American gangster boss Al Capone went to prison for failing to file tax returns on his illegal earnings.

IV

Aquino's administration is under every duty and obligation to halt GMA's continued destruction of all the institutions of our government. This includes ignoring the Supreme Court in its utter lawless decisions.

Arroyo and the Writ of Ne Exeat

2011-11-10T16:04:00.001+08:00

The ontology of Gloria Macapagal-Arroyo

In both the common law and civil law tradition, the sovereign's power to prevent its subjects from departing the realm has been expressed as the power of "ne exeat" or the writ of ne exeat. Ne exeat means "that he not depart." In the long history of "ne exeat", it has been used to prevent subjects from leaving a kingdom without a license from the king, to prevent debtors from leaving the realm without repaying their debts, and to prevent a husband or wife from removing property from the jurisdiction of a court. Most recently, it has been discussed in relationship of the power of a parent to prevent another parent from removing a child from one country to another.

Beames wrote: "this Writ is now mostly used where a suit is commenced in the Court against a Man, and he designing to defeat the other of his just demand, or to avoid the Justice and Equity of this Court, is about to go beyond Sea, or, however, that the Duty will be endangered if he goes."

Nevertheless, the power of ne exeat is something that surely subsists among the recognized powers of the sovereign. What would be the meaning or significance of national boundaries if the price of disobedience is simply a one way airplane or ship fare to another country? The question is what is the extent of that power. In countries where the power of ne exeat continues, it is used in both civil and criminal cases. The state and the courts must have some effective power to bring about justice. I recognize that there must be a balance. The medieval Spanish practice, which remained in the Philippines, until Independence in 1898, of requiring the approval of the parish priest in order to leave one's village, is tyranny. And the international community has established a framework to accept legitimate refugees. It's called the Convention Relating to the Status of Refugees (1951).

But Gloria Macapagal-Arroyo, having been sued on plunder and being investigated for election fraud, cannot be said to be a legitimate refugee under the convention. And considering powerful politicians have many opportunities to thwart the public prosecutor before a matter even makes it before a regular trial judge with the seemingly unlimited interlocutory appeals of simple criminal charges and informations, the process could be used to frustrate the ends of justice.

Next, I have reviewed the medical information disclosed to the public regarding the condition of Macapagal-Arroyo. It appears, that she has been aware of her degenerative disorder for some time. All cases of parathyroid disease is one of very slow degeneration. It is unclear what her reasons were for waiting so long to address the underlying parathyroid problem or why the medical profession in the Philippines cannot address her symptoms. The fact that she creates a medical emergency for herself, does not thereby increase the burden on the public prosecutor to prohibit her from leaving the country.

The standard test for injunctive relief is helpful: what is the likelihood of the prosecutor to prevail on the merits, what is the irreparable harm if the injunction is not granted, does the balance of harms weigh in favor of the prosecutor and would public policy support injunctive relief?

It becomes obvious that if a fugitive is permitted to depart from the jurisdictions of the courts and enter into realms beyond their reach, that will be irreparable harm. It is also true that the case for why Arroyo must go abroad has not been clearly established and so it is difficult to assess what harm, if any, will come to her of the prosecutor's doing. Just because she refuses to get medical treatment in the Philippines and thereby exacerbates her degenerative condition, does not increase the harm to her at the cause of an injunction. Finally, there is a clear public policy in favor of having crimes of public officials like corruption, electoral fraud and plunder be resolved to finality by the courts.

From the standard from an injunction (or a writ of prohibition in some parts), the standards have been met. As is regularly stated, if there is substantial likelihood of irreparable harm, the balance of harms favors the prosecutor and public policy supports the issuance of an injunction, then the question of prevailing on the merits of the case becomes less important. At this point, it would be difficult to meaningfully prove up one's case against Arroyo if the investigation is continuing.

The standards for exercising ne exeat powers is much lower that injunctive relief. So, if an injunction would be appropriate to prohibit travel, as the Secretary of Justice has done administratively with her order, the sovereign would obviously have the power to restrain Arroyo from departing the country through its ne exeat powers.

ceci n'est pas une maladie

Movie Review: Kape Barako

2011-10-29T16:50:00.001+08:00

Ceci n'est pas un cafe.

In a number of reviews that have been posted, there seems to be this repetition of a certain perspective regarding independent cinema that I must dissent from. It is the outright dismissal of all films that feature sex, sexuality or the naked bodies. It is not a surprising occurrence. In Manila, and especially among the wealthier classes, there is a public aversion to the body, to sex and to life. The animal part of us is something to feel shame and guilt towards -- as though our bodies were something separate from ourselves.

I do not disagree with the view, on the other hand, that many independent films go to a reactionary extreme (an enantiodromia perhaps?) where a film enacts a similar one-sided compensatory reaction which has value in pointing us to the underlying problem.

Kape Barako, directed by Monti Parungao and written by Lex Bonife, is a clear attempt to tell us something about our feelings of shame and guilt but not from the view point of tragedy. As von Franz once wrote:

It is a normal rhythm in human reactions, illustrated for instance in the classical antique plays where three tragedies are succeeded by a comedy. One could not go home after having seen Sophocles' Oedipus Rex and two others like it; there had to be one of Aristophanes' comedies at the end so that everyone would roar with laughter... It is the climax of excitement which turns into the wish to laugh -- one cannot stand too much of such an exaggerated tragic condition so that occasionally one is compelled to make fun of it.

It is for these reasons, that comedies, especially must be looked at very very carefully, before one can cast them into the rubbish bin of meaninglessness or our own shadow contents. Kape Barako is precisely a Feast of Fools. That is a celebration of medieval Europeans in which the roles in social and religious life were reversed and blasphemy reigned as the liturgy on this day. It was finally prohibited in the 1400s with the strictest punishments. This of course was followed by what Norbert Elias referred to as the civiling process in which our bodies, materiality and so forth was increasingly habituated/disciplined into its present state through shame, guilt and repugnance. European and American encounters with natives all over the tropics who had hang ups in departments other than the body and hiding it presented very uncomfortable moments of ethnographic self-reflection which would usually result in some effort to "correct" "reform" or "teach" us -- including Filipinos. Now, of course, anthropologists write books and books about our neurosis with how we clothe ourselves!

So, we are definitely in the realm of the shadow in this movie. It has the usual features of this realm: naked bodies, open and unabridged displays of sexuality, objectification of the male body. But then it has something more -- which, if felt out accordingly, might produce a light nausea. Coffee is mixed with semen and served to clients.

Ceci n'est pas une barrista.

Let's do some associations, shall we?

Coffee was first discovered as a useful bean plant in Ethiopia hundreds of years ago and crossed over to Yemen where it became firmly established as a vivifying drink -- used by Sufi mystics in their night time devotions to stay awake. It was banned by the Ethiopian Orthodox Tewahedo Church in the 12th century and was unbanned in the 19th century. It became a drink of the aristocracy in Europe in the 17th century and fortunes were made by imperial-merchant companies growing coffee in the tropical colonies and importing them back to the imperium.

Coffee is black but it has an awakening, vivifying effect. It is slightly acidic. Traditionally, coffee trees were grown under much larger canopy trees and were grown in what was called 'shade-cultivation.' So coffee has a strong association with elements that could be associated with the shadow contents of the psyche. It is grown in the shade, the shadows. It is black but had an awakening, vivifying effect. It goes through an extensive process from the tree to the roasted bean that is ground and and then hot water added. It is not just a primitive shadow content. But the liquid end-result of a long process of distillation. It is a concentrated form of the shadow.

I don't feel like I need to really go into a long history or association of semen, do I? Semen has always been associated with what it does in humans and other animals. It creates.

So what does it mean for coffee, this concentrated form of the shadow, is mixed, secretly, with the procreative force? In Kape Barako, we are told that it activates and resonates with gay men -- who as I mentioned before represent a certain shadow figure. This is a key point. It is only the gay men who respond to this powerful form of creativity, mixed with the shadow -- who slowly turn a failing coffeehouse into a successful coffeehouse with gay bar qualities. In order to save the coffeehouse, the owner agrees to a macho dance show and he is able to save the coffeehouse. Although the coffeehouse has a certain historical association with elitism and hierarchy I don't think that's a central theme in the movie. Instead, we are shown that the mixing of this condescended and concentrated form of the shadow and creativity offers a recipe towards a livelihood.

I will now talk about the end of the movie, so be forewarned.

The end scene tells us that we have experienced a Fools Mass or a Feast of Fools. Afi Africa's character presents a complex reversal of gender norms in many respects. He is the bakla. But, at the same time, he has adopted the Christian and conservative attitude on feminine sexuality as his own -- that is, he's a virgin. This only gets more complexified when Johnron Tañada's character ends the movie by going down on him. It robs him entirely of the self-imposed femininity of his sexuality. This indicates that the comedy has provided in a joking manner, the most serious truth which names the important role of the shadow in the development of consciousness, but does not go so far as to fully demonstrate it and remove the story from the realm of play. Nothing is safe including the absurdity of adopting a narrow, misogynistic view of feminine sexuality. Had it not been a Feast of Fools type comedy, it would have ended with Johnron Tañada making out with Afi Africa and then a tender love-making scene.

The renewal and further development of consciousness cannot occur without the Feast of Fools. It cannot be skipped and dismissing it only adds energy to the autonomous functioning of the shadow -- which may be what your soul is just looking for. A reactionary movement to one extreme before transcending both.

I hope to spark a discussion with this post about some of the things I've written here. Please feel free to add your voice.

Movie Review: Dahmer

2011-10-28T15:05:00.002+08:00

I did not watch this movie when it first came out. And I watched it on an impulse. I don't recall having such a nauseating experience of a movie in such a long time. One particularly gruesome scene, in which I averted my eyes and muted the sound was when Dahmer drills a hole into the head of the actor playing Konerak Sinthasomphone, the 14 year old Laotian victim of Dahmer (played by Dion Basco, one of the very handsome and talented Fil-Am Basco brothers of California).

It doesn't matter how many times the story of Konerak Sinthasomphone has been told or even nervously joked about by American comedians when Dahmer was caught. A psychopath drugging a 14 year old boy unconscious, raping him and drilling a small hole into the side of his head while he's still alive, but unconscious, is just too much to stomach. And this scene occurs in the first ten or so minutes of the movie so it was like a cinematic punch.

The only thing that was more disturbing was when the Konerak character made his escape. Knowing the outline of the story of Dahmer from when he was caught, it was the longest sequence of the film, for me.

You see, Jeffrey Dahmer, was an American serial killer, who would drug his victims, rape them, drill holes in their heads, kill them, decapitate them, eat parts of the them, refrigerate other parts of them and chemically dissolve other parts. His victims were all men (and most gay).

Konerak Sinthasomphone's death was so tragic that twenty years later I remembered it and was haunted by it. You see, a few years before he ensnared Konerak, he was convicted of molesting Konerak's younger brother. Konerak was Laotian.

In the early morning hours of May 27, 1991, three police officers responded to a 911 call from a rundown Milwaukee, Wisconsin suburb. Two 18 year old Black women witnessed an incoherent Asian boy running around naked and bleeding from the head and rectum. He could not speak English but in his incoherence demonstrated obvious fright at Dahmer who was 31. Dahmer told the police that Konerak was his 19 year old gay lover -- Konerak was 14. And that they had a lover's quarrel. The police returned the two to Dahmer's apartment. The police officer subsequently reported back to the 911 dispatcher "Intoxicated Asian, naked male was returned to his sober boyfriend" then added that his partner was "going to get deloused."

Konerak Sinthasomphone (1976-1991)

The police made no effort to identify Konerak to learn that he was a child. The two women followed up with the police later and were told that everything had been taken care of. Although Dahmer had already drilled a hole into Konerak's head. He would subsequently strangle him to death, rape and abuse his body then dismember it and keep his head as a trophy. He would then rape and kill four more young gay men.

Had the police identified Konerak and Dahmer, they would have either discovered that Konerak was 14 or Dahmer was still on court probation for molesting Konerak's younger brother. But they didn't.

This movie is not for the faint of heart and is a true horror film -- even if its true and I knew how it would end. This movie and reflection on it will leave you with questions about evil in this world -- this ought to be even more challenging if you believe in a personal, benevolent and omnipotent god. I previously wrote about Ladlad's push for hate crimes inquiry and legislation. I think the story of Konerak shows us what is lacking in hate crimes legislation. It is police training and proper investigation and enforcement of the law as it is written that is needed most. Until the rule of law is present, there is no justice.

Movie Review: Ang Sayaw ng Dalawang Kaliwang Paa

2011-10-24T05:18:00.003+08:00

I have decided to end my long silence on Philippine films in this blog. There are a number of reasons for doing so. The film I'm about to review being one of them. I do not intend to write many reviews of Philippine films so when you see one, know that the film has registered as significant to me.

The script of this movie is part traditional cinematic dialogue and part the spoken poetry of Merlinda Bobis, Ruth Mabanglo, Joi Barros, Rebecca Anonuevo, Ophelia Dimalanta and Benilda Santos. You might wonder if its possible to include so much feminist poetry in a movie without it becoming academic. The movie is hardly academic. Instead, the poetry is used as a way for Karen (played by Jean Garcia) to bring a particular matter into the field of consciousness with more emotional resonance than just dialogue.

Rich kid Marlon (played by Paulo Avelino) is a mediocre student in his poetry class, taught by Karen. He also happens to have a big crush on her. Stalking her, he discovers that she also sidelines as a dance instructor and choreographer. He is caught watching her from outside her studio one day by fellow poetry class student Dennis (Rocco Nacino). He does not recognize or really have a familiarity with Dennis from his poetry class.

However, sensing an opportunity, Marlon offers Dennis a ride to the studio the next day where he eventually decides to hire Marlon to teach him the various dances that Karen is teaching so that he can enter the class with competence. Marlon simply asks that the instruction be done outside the knowledge of Karen. Dennis who has a crush on Marlon readily agrees.

The private tutoring brings the two young men together. Marlon eventually enters Karen's dance class. However, Karen seeing precisely what is going on, decides to bring things into consciousness which naturally brings light to a conflict in Marlon. As we know, so long as things remain in the unconscious, it is easy for denial to operate effectively with the left hand simply undoing what the right hand has done without conflict. But as soon as the conflict is brought into consciousness, there is tremendous suffering.

Let me digress momentarily to help illustrate this point. In Lihim ni Antonio, we could clearly see what was going on, di ba? Remember Uncle Jonbert. It was as clear as clear could be -- even Tong's mother saw him cuddling with Tong. But, as long as denial is operative and everything is occurring in the unconscious, there is no problem. When Tere is finally told the obvious truth about the unfaithfulness of her overseas husband, suddenly everything is dragged into consciousness. The shadow side is brought under the light and what Tong fantasized Uncle Jonbert being his plaything, turns out that Tong is Uncle Jonbert's plaything. We see that when the conflict is brought into consciousness, there is tremendous suffering and it does not necessarily produce a successful end. Tere goes catatonic and Tong is sent drifting out to sea -- to reproduce the struggle and, perhaps, transcend it.

Back to Sayaw. So Karen nudges Marlon to be conscious of his conflict. Karen overhears a brief comment by Dennis to Marlon which indicates something occurring behind the scenes. Karen then discovers from the studio landlord the entire arrangement. She makes it known to Marlon that she knows and also asks him if she thinks his crush on her is appropriate. Marlon's reaction is to blame Dennis and be mad at Dennis! The conflict has been brought into consciousness.

It is at this point that Karen helps conduct Marlon through a series of exercises that will help him to discover within himself the resolution to his conflict: a choreographed version of Humapadnon in the Hinilawod epic of the Suludnon.

I will save the ending for you to discover if/how his conflict is resolved when you watch the film. But I will add one more point about the movie which I think is relevant for my understanding of it. As Marlon and Dennis work towards the performance, Marlon has a moment of panic where he attempts to control his out-of-control feelings which are well outside of his comfort zone. He does it by attempting to minimize the significance of Dennis. (In much the same way that the conflict of Walang Kawala begins when Joaquin attempts to take control of his own conflict by trying to minimize the significance of Waldo.)

The final scene, which is the staged, choreographed enactment of the part of the Hinilawod where Nagmalitong Yawa saves Humapadnon, is where the conflict's underlying symbolic tensions -- with Marlon at its center as Humapadnon and the archetypal forces at work -- are most clearly revealed.

Alvin Yapan did an excellent job of weaving the story together with the textiles of feminist poetry, indigenous epic and emotion. The cinematography, by Alvin Viola, was also masterfully done just as he did in Lalake sa Parola and Lihim ni Antonio.

The movie will be opening this Wednesday 26 October at the following theaters:
SM: North Edsa, Megamall, Centerpoint, Manila, Southmall, MOA and Bacoor
Ayala: Glorietta 4, Trinoma

Book Review: Gay Dads

2011-10-17T11:50:00.000+08:00

David Strah is a New York City resident who is a gay father and a writer. He wrote this book based on his experiences as a gay dad with his partner Barry.

This is definitely not an academic book and everything about gay fatherhood in the U.S. One of the benefits of being gay is that most gay men do not have accidental children. However, the mystery of the accidental child reappears in the wholly arbitrary process of social workers, adoption agencies, lawyers and government officials.

It's clear that not every person should be a parent. This is true for both biological parents and prospective adoptive parents. At one point, the inquiry regarding adoption was that it was a benefit to childless parents. Now, we look at adoption as what is in the best interest of the child.

But this is quite a subjective analysis that is loaded with tremendous social implications. Art. 185 of the Family Code requires that "Husband and wife must jointly adopt, except in the following cases: (1) When one spouse seeks to adopt his own illegitimate child; or (2) When one spouse seeks to adopt the legitimate child of the other."

This provision, for intracounty adoptions in the Philippines, limits adoptions by gay men to those that are married to women. However, it is possible for an unmarried gay man in many other countries to adopt a Philippine child through an intercountry adoption so long as he is "eligible to adopt under his/her national law." Sec 9 of RA 8043.

What a strange sort of discrepancy in the law. It is much more complicated and expensive to complete an intercountry adoption. How funny this strange sort of discrepancy is. What does this really tell us about our country? Especially if you look at the fact that the standard for adoptions is the best interest of the child. How is only married parents for intracountry adoptions in the best interest of the child, where other forms of parenting are not -- except if the child leaves the country? Is the standard the best interest of the child or the best interest in the integrity of outdated, reactionary public policy on marriage in our country?

This book does not address any of those issues. Rather, it focuses on the stories of how men of varying backgrounds who feel the call to be a parent go through different trials and tribulations to become parents.

The version I read was a 270 page paperback published by Tarcher/Penguin (2003), ISBN-10:1585423335. It is written in English. The lowest price I found online was used at abebooks.com.

Get Happy!

2011-10-01T09:00:00.000+08:00

Yes, I want to be in that number...

2011-09-30T09:00:00.000+08:00

What...

2011-09-29T09:00:00.000+08:00

Smoke...

2011-09-28T09:00:00.000+08:00

Nobody Knows...

2011-09-27T09:00:00.000+08:00

Click here, embedding disabled

I want to be in that number....

2011-09-26T09:00:00.000+08:00

love of my life

2011-09-16T14:30:00.000+08:00

Miss Angola

2011-09-15T02:09:00.001+08:00

Movie Review: Love is the Devil

2011-09-09T13:45:00.000+08:00

Well, the title may be true in a broad and abstract manner. I am only generally familiar with Francis Bacon's work (that is the 20th century artist) and almost nothing about his life. In another life, he would have been another two bit drag queen. Instead, he is a famous, rich asshole who likes to have rough sex with the young men whose lives he otherwise controls.

It was difficult to finish watching, only because I'm not enchanted by Francis Bacon's work or his life.

Book Review: Islamic Homosexualities

2011-09-06T14:04:00.000+08:00

Stephen O. Murray is an independent American social scientist who has extensively studied and written about homosexualities around the world. Will Roscoe is another independent American scholar who has written extensively on homosexualities in North America.

I have a relative who is Muslim and he spent several years in the middle East involved in Muslim charitable organizations. Although typically open-minded and gay-positive, he swore over and over that he never met a gay Muslim. This naturally has always varied from my limited experience with gay Muslim men in Muslim societies. I mean, I only spent a few days in one Muslim society when I was younger but I was propositioned to have sex several times a day by other guy around my age. Maybe it was just the city I was in? The chapter on modern day prostitution by young men in Pakistan seems to echo what many young men in our country do to make an extra buck -- gay sex.

This book, however, is filled with so many fascinating aspects of the Arab world's and Islam's sexualities that it is worth reading if you are interested at all in anthropological studies in sexuality or religious interaction with sexuality. I particularly enjoyed Arabian Nights so I found this to help contextualize those stories, somewhat.

Here is one excerpt cited by Murray:

Sultan Mahmud [reigned from Ghazna, 988-1030], accompanied by Talhak, the jester, attended the sermon of a certain preacher. When they arrived the preacher was saying that whoever had made love to a young boy, on the day of judgment would be made to carry him across the narrow bridge of Sirat, which leads to heaven. Sultan Mahmud was terrified and began to weep. Talhak told him: "O Sultan, do not weep. Be happy that on that day you will not be left on foot either."

Another anecdote calls into question the clerical preaching against homosexualities:

A preacher was saying in Kashan that on the day of Resurrection the custody of the holy well of Kothan [in Paradise] will be with Imam 'Ali [the cousin of the Prophet], and he will give its water to the man of anal integrity. A man from the audience got up and said, "Your reverence, if this is the case, he will have to put it back in the pitcher and drink it all himself."

Although our country is not a Muslim majority country (although hanging around the tiangge in Manila you'd never know), our closest geographical and linguistic neighbors are: Malaysia, Brunei and Indonesia.

The book is not an exposition in Islamic jurisprudence or theology so it would not be a good starting point to better understand the reasoning behind official condemnation of homosexuality in much of the Muslim world. However, if you'd like to get a better sense of what people were doing while officaldom was condemning homosexuality, it's a fascinating read.

If you consider how patriarchal and misogynistic many Muslim countries are, it is only natural that homosexuality of the power-differential type would play a prominent role (especially where access to women is severely restricted). Aside from the strict sexuality approach to reading this book, I found the chapter on the Ottoman slave trade to be a fascinating way to avoid military authority usurping the civilian sovereign -- and its consequences for family relations including sexuality!

The version I read was a 392 page paperback published by NYU Press (February 1, 1997), ISBN-13:978-0814774687. It is written in English. The lowest price I found online was used at amazon.com.

Book Review: Nationalism and Sexuality

2011-09-05T15:45:00.002+08:00

George Mosse was a German-American professor of history (Bascom Professor) at the University of Wisconsin Madison. He also taught at the Hebrew University of Jerusalem.

This was one of the first books I read in what I would consider studies in sexuality and sexual orientation. In a bend to history, I read it not because of an interest in sexuality but because someone had told me its central thesis was that institutional attempts at bowdlerization always preceded systemic fascist violence.

As I waded through Mosse's prose, much of it was confusing. I read it with Norbert Elias's Civilizing Process. Looking back, its funny how these kinds of text which are seemingly meaningless to youthful eyes could be so impactful in terms of theoretical orientation.

In essence, Mosse demonstrated in this book that understandings of sexuality constantly threatened European bourgeois sensibilities and ended up forging an alliance with nationalism that insisted on controlling sexuality as a form of proper sensibility and proper functioning of the state. Through this arrangement, controlled sexuality came to define and haunt bourgeois society's very existence.

Mosse moves deliberately and carefully through the maze of historical evidence to show how masculinity and abnormality came to characterize a set of outsiders who had to be controlled and then, eventually, sent to the death camps.

The version I read was a 232 page hardcover published by Howard Fertig (first edition) (May 1985), ISBN-13:978-0865273504. I would look for the paperback version though as it was cheaper and readily available. It is written in English. The lowest price I found online was used at abebooks.com for the paperback version.

Movie Review: Rivers Wash Over Me

2011-09-04T02:26:00.003+08:00

Although it now has been many years since I was a teenager in high school, I felt emotionally this movie hit the nail on the head with the complexities of being different in a parochial backwater with a fairly nuanced treatment of race relations and power. Here's the summary:

When his mother dies, young teenager Sequan Greene leaves New York City to live with relatives deep in rural Alabama, where he tries to keep his homosexuality a guarded secret with little success. But when his cousin best friend's rebellious girlfriend recognizes Sequan's orientation, she befriends him and eventually introduces him to her gay brother, Jake.

To the point, the movie is about the angst of being a gay teen in a world where the avenues for meaningful emotional intimacy are few or nonexistent. At a critical moment in the movie, Jake and his sister introduce Sequan to swimming and we hear Take Me to the River in the background. It was a nice juxtaposition since the story is mostly a trial-by-fire.

Movie Review: Parallel Sons

2011-09-03T14:34:00.002+08:00

As the movie poster says "one of the most memorable american indies of the decade." I'm not sure if this is a facetious statement like "Perhaps, one day, this century will be known as Deleuzian" or if it was meant to be serious. I was bored through most of the film although the film's twist at the end made me feel like I got some credit for sitting through the whole thing. After reading some other reviews, I actually feel like it was due to budget constraints that the vision for the story was much bigger than the available paint and canvas -- too bad. Of course, the other point is that it came out in 1995 (although I did not realize this until reading the reviews after) and I don't recall it in the 1990s. Here's the short summary of the movie:

Seth is a bored 20-year-old drinker obsessed with African-American culture, although he's never met a black person. When he encounters a black man bleeding from a bullet wound and wielding a gun, Seth helps him, and the two form a close relationship.

Okay, so you can see where this could easily go. I was very fascinated by the symbolism but the treatment was uneven and bunched up near the end. If you are doing the marathon DVD watching for knowledge of the history of gay cinema, this should be on the list.

Book Review: The Invention of Sodomy in Christian Theology

2011-09-02T14:40:00.000+08:00

Mark Jordan is the Richard Reinhold Niebuhr Professor of Divinity at the Harvard Divinity School. He wrote this book and then wrote a sequel entitled The Invention of Sodomy in Christian Theology which I have reviewed elsewhere on this blog.

This book is nothing like the next book except that they are both period pieces about how Christian conservatives like to control sexuality in some pretty psychologically crazy ways and how those ways are characterized by then-present hostilities with foreign nations.

The first tid-bit that I found to be tremendously fascinating was the story of St. Pelagius. You see. In Spain, a thousand years ago, a battle was raging between Christians and their Moorish/Muslim overlords. Apparently some well known bishop was captured, but in his place, he sent his distant young cousin/nephew, Pelagius, who was a hotty. How do I know a young nephew of a captured bishop was a hotty, because apparently every hagiographer that wrote about him for the next three hundred years makes his hotness one of the central themes of this Catholic saint's martyrdom.

You see, the caliph who captured the bishop and took Pelagius as the substitute was smitten. And apparently, as we are led to believe all Muslims are this way, the sultan wanted Pelagius who rebuffed him. I read the translations Jordan provided, and frankly, I thought he was a big prissy bakla that didn't want to put out for some old man. The caliph told him he'd have all the riches in the world and live the life of someone being kept by a sugar daddy. Pelagius wasn't having it. Well, as you can tell, he was eventually killed. And what do our hagiographers tell us happened to him? In his divine beauty, he went to heaven where he lived the glorious life of someone being kept by a sugar daddy -- and not just any sugar daddy, the sugar Father.

Anyhow, this hagiography apparently is the origin of how sodomy, as a sin appeared in Christian theology. In Bowers v. Hardwick, the infamous US Supreme Court case that upheld a Georgia sodomy statute in the 1980s, only to be overruled 20 years later, the court's opinion said they sarcastically said they would not challenge a law that existed since the time of Henry V (fourteenth century English monarch). But you see, they were off by about 300 years. Sodomy was invented as a category of thought a few hundred years before that.

Jordan then goes into an extended exposition about how the theologians and confessional-manualistas went into this long and tortured process (tortured in the affective sense) of trying to contain the latent explosion that lie just beneath the surface. One of the biggest dangers facing the confessional-manualistas was how to extract confessions of man-on-man sex without giving confessees any ideas, tips or pointers.

You see where this is going? It's worth the read if you are or were Catholic or are interested in how religious thought has shaped the present struggles of LGBT folks throughout the world.

The version I read was a 200 page hardcover published by University of Chicago Press (May 1, 1997), ISBN-13:978-8486329402. It is written in English. The lowest price I found online was used at abebooks.com and amazon.com for the paperback version.

Movie Review: Just Say Love

2011-09-01T14:25:00.000+08:00

Well well well. I am not the biggest fan of the dialogue-only genre -- especially when the set is designed to resemble the set of a live performance. There was Who's Afraid of Virgina Woolf? and of course Rope, but those really weren't dialogue-only were they?

This is really a dialogue-only and I recall, somewhere a movie just like this that came out in the 1990s, but for the life of me I can't remember its name. It is shot almost exclusively in bed and in black and white. I think I fell asleep when I wasn't contemplating how to kill myself and end the boredom. This movie doesn't have that problem at all and in fact, I liked the ending, sort of, so it wasn't bad.

It's just one of those movies that you really have to enjoy sitting through seventy plus minutes of dialogue to enjoy, which I rarely do. So, there it is. If you had or have confusion regarding attraction to straight or straight-identified men, this would be a movie to torture yourself with.

Movie Review: Contracorriente

2011-08-27T10:40:00.000+08:00

I may be biased in favor of this movie because my life revolves around the ocean. If that is the case, then, I accept it. The movie takes place in a coastal fishing village of Peru. But it could have just as easily taken place in any of the coastal fishing villages in the Philippines.

Contracorriente is the love story that Walang Kawala attempted to be. The main character is Miguel. He is a married fisherman who observes the conservative town's patriarchal traditions. Then there is Santiago, a wealthy out-of-towner who paints and lives in a remote part of the beach away from the town. Miguel is madly in love with Santiago and for quite a long time is able to keep it a secret. But then the heat is applied to the pot and the soup heats up. Miguel is trapped in between two competing view points regarding his life. As he attempts to choose one view point, he is haunted by the other until a decision has to be made.

The cinematography is wonderful and the clear direct exposition on the movements of the soul are more seemlessly revealed in this story of love and life. Definitely a cuddle-up movie.

Book Review: Gay, Straight and the Reason Why

2011-08-21T09:00:00.001+08:00

Simon LeVay was an associate professor of biology at the University of California, San Diego and a researcher with the Salk Institute for Biological Studies.

I recall when Simon LeVay's more media-attention grabbing research came out. He published an article about differences in the structure of the hypothalamus in heterosexual and homosexual men in Nature. I also recall some of the more media-attention grabbing research that he discusses in his book.

It's a great book. It goes through the medical and biological research on sexuality over the last twenty years since his IHON3 study came out. I read it as an epistemological meditation of sorts. What stood out the most was the research showing a strong correlation between gay men and gender dysphoria in pre-adolescence. I recall a book chapter in Fear of a Queer Planet regarding how normative psychiatry and psychology have used gender dysphoria diagnoses to try to cure children of the threat of homosexuality. However, it appears from this book that those treatments are ineffective (or counter indicated).

The book leaves unanswered the difficult questions. It's difficult to assess how much of homosexual identity is bound to culture and how much of it derives from the mammalian parts of the brain. The book doesn't answer those questions but clarifies and restates in a very readable fashion the current state of medical and scientific knowledge on the subject matter which seems to clarify: There are gays who were born that way, and there are gays who have been made gay by others -- and there are those who choose to live as gays for other reasons.

This is book is definitely worth reading if you are interested in the current biological and medical research on sexuality and homosexuality.

The version I read was a 432 page hardcover published by Oxford University Press USA (September 29, 2010), ISBN-13: 978-0199737673. It is written in English. The lowest price I found online was used at amazon.com.

Book Review: Sex and Conquest

2011-08-11T14:25:00.001+08:00

Richard Trexler was a professor of history at Binghamton University, State University of New York. He was a strong supporter of "public life" being considered a valid area of inquiry for professional historians.

This is a curious book. I felt, in some respects, I got way too much information. In others, I felt like I didn't get enough. If somewhere were to write a history of early contact Filipinos' sexuality through the lens of conquistador and early missionary writing, the first half of that book would already have been written in this book. You see, the subtitle, "Gendered Violence, Political Order and the European Conquest of the Americas" spends about 75% of the time on gendered violence, political order and European gender and sexuality and conquest.

Trexler looked at everything in terms of power, which is what all Foucauldean historians do, and so I felt like there were times when alternative explanations could be presented for areas where the historical record called for reasonable inferences. Trexler did not do that.

But I did find the discursive practices of the Spanish regarding sexuality, gender and violence to be very helpful to consider the colonial past of present Philippine sexuality. I continue to hold an abiding suspicion than the traditionally understood transgender bakla, fa'afafine, fakaleiti, mahu, hijra, etc., etc., are a response from the collective conscious attitude towards colonialism. (I myself have located this in 19th century Philippine folktales.)

Nevertheless, I do think that gendered violence has a role to play in this, but in one that is slightly different than Trexler suggests. Instead of trying to hypothesize by triangulating from biased documents regarding sexuality, Trexler ought to have looked to sources where sex and gender weren't the main focus like oral histories, folktales, folksongs, etc., to help organize an understanding of pre-contact sexuality and gender.

He doesn't really do that, unfortunately. I still found the description of Iberian sexuality and gender to be interesting -- especially in light of the deep and abiding contact with Muslim sexualities and genders for such an extended period and how that contact was transformed by power (complexes) into a gendered conquest.

The version I read was a 292 page hardcover published by Cornell University Press (October 1995), ISBN-13: 978-0801432248. It is written in English. The lowest price I found online was used at abebooks.com and amazon.com.

Movie Review: Lucky Bastard

2011-08-09T16:10:00.000+08:00

I was slightly nauseous when the movie began. This was primarily from the ill-placed trailer for a thinly veiled porn flick entitled "Run! Bitch! Run!" There was too much slash-and-gore juxtaposed to gratuitous woman-and-man sex. Well, too much for my eyes. I probably could have tolerated the slash and gore or the woman and man sex separately but together in such tightly cut sequences of a trailer was too much.

I feel better getting that out of my system. I was expecting something on the same level as the Run Bitch Run movie. That trailer was actually preceded by several trailers that were (1) very poorly done or (2) the movie was poorly done and showed up poorly in the trailer. The bar was set low, in other words.

However, the movie was actually quite gripping. As someone who struggled with control issues when I was younger and having been surrounded by the control-chaos dyad in social relations from an early age, I can attest that the writer of this movie had some experience in it. Much of the acting was bad.

(gratuitous, yes)

In fact, Dale Dymkoski who plays druggie-pornstar Denny in the movie was such a bad actor that it sometimes interfered with the story line. I recall in several instances where I wasn't sure if he was portraying high or if he was having difficulty remembering his lines or reading from the board off screen.

Nevertheless, it's a love story and the writer does a good job of driving home the point. I was disappointed, however, with the resolution of the Denny character in the end. I won't give away the ending but I will talk in general terms about the structure of the movie. If that's enough to spoil it for you, avert your eyes now.

(but he had brown eyes in the movie, I think)

Denny becomes the shadow -- a trash bin of everything shameful a professional gay man must reject in himself. As disturbing as the regressive and codependent relationship Rusty the main character established with Denny, the porn-star-druggie, it had a tremendous beneficial impact on Rusty. But where does the movie leave Denny, the drugged out porn star in the end? That is the disappointment in this movie. It come so close yet so far away from a satisfactory ending in my part. The dyad of control-chaos is so rich that a love story can blossom and still adequately address the points.

I don't really know who the Lucky Bastard is in this movie (buts its not about a bunch of blue collar Jews killing Nazi's during World War II).

If you previously suffered from drug addiction or codependent relationships, I would watch this one with a little caution.

Movie Review: Howl

2011-08-07T15:45:00.001+08:00

(Borrowed for educational purposes from the NY Times who borrowed it from film maker)

I was probably the last person to see this movie and if I wasn't, then you ought to watch it. James Franco won best actor from the Central Ohio Film Critics Association and the movie was nominated for Grand Jury Prize at Sundance (whatever that means these days).

Growing up as an adolescent in a provincial backwater, I was constantly hitting up against the parochial conservatism of authority figures when in the collective realms that I felt my attendance was compulsory in. I recall once an authority figure, a stern lesbian nun, asking me if I felt I had been born in the wrong decade. It was a curious question to which I replied, no.

However, it did get me thinking that perhaps I had been misplaced. Then, as poststructuralism occupied the temporal striated organization of my neural landscape, I found Nietzsche's idea of the untimely man very appealing and was able to position my entire existence as somehow a poststructural function of the limits of empirical knowledge. I was an aberration of the present epistemology that man operates from and innocently railed against the epistemology, the ontology.

Fortunately, I did not permanently stop at the monument to God is dead, God remains dead and we have killed him. Instead, I continued on the train in the land of conventional or relative truth to discover that at the next station, the absolute, the infinite has transformed and renewed itself -- hurling itself towards its next declination, deterioration and dissolution -- skirting the edge of land where it meets the abyss like a reef skirts the edge of the diffusion of salt water.

From point to point, from line to line, like a line of flight.

I dedicate this post to the Bonsai Hunter, Herbs (happy birthday), Citybuoy (happy birthday), Victor, Manila Bitch, Partee Boi and the Bashful One and the Closet Geek.

Rudolf Brazda, 98, Gay Concentration Camp Survivor

2011-08-05T15:50:00.000+08:00

Rudolf Brazda, 98, who is the last known gay survivor of the German concentration camps (and sent there because of his homosexuality) died.

Brazda was born in 1913. He grew up in the eastern German town of Meuselwitz and repeatedly ran into trouble with Nazi authorities over his homosexuality before being sent to Buchenwald.

Brazda lived in the Alsace region of eastern France after World War II. Earlier this year, he was named a knight in the country’s Legion of Honor.

Read the AP story here.

Movie Review: Homewrecker

2011-08-01T09:30:00.000+08:00

This has been in my queue to watch since it first popped up somewhere as a suggestion. Something about the poster made me think it would be stupid. It wasn't. It was like a made-for-TV movie only all of the significant characters were gay. Dylan Vox is very handsome in his bleached blond hair, for the benefit of my more shallow readers, here's another half-naked photograph of him in bunny ears without the bleached hair.

He's apparently been in a whole host of gay TV shows that I've never seen. The plot is light and well thought out. The story played in a small Hollywood theater for eight months before being adapted to a low budget movie. This can be a nice date movie since the main theme of the movie, when you overlook the distracting sex scenes, is the triumph of emotional depth over sexual breadth.

(another photo of Dylan Vox from the Homewrecker)

Nothing earth shattering here just a small step in the direction of heteronormativity, as queer theorists call it, however, buried deep in the queer culture of Lost Angeles.

Is Hate Crime Legislation What We Really Need?

2011-07-28T16:15:00.000+08:00

Ang Ladlad is again pushing Congress to enact hate crime legislation. Certified urgent panawagan sa Kongreso sa imbestigasyon ng LGBT hate crimes

I recall many years ago, after I left the province, testifying against hate crime legislation with a group of Marxists. I recall a right-wing senator, who also opposed the legislation, asking me many questions and being flummoxed by the reasoning since we obviously didn't come from the same point of view.

In essence, I opposed hate crime legislation because I felt that it would disproportionately impact the poor. When a poor person attacks a rich person, should the sentence be enhanced because the rich person was targeted because of his or her wealth? Would a judge ever enhance a sentence of a rich person who targeted a poor person because they were poor (assuming that a rich person actually was adjudicated guilty of committing a crime against a poor victim)?

Do hate crimes really just become another way for the government to manage the poor by adding other opportunities to extend sentences of imprisonment. I think that, all things being equal, hate crime legislation has disproportionately impacted the poor because the poor are disproportionately put in jail. (In the US, this translates in young Black men going to jail longer for attacking a white person than otherwise.)

I doubt that hate crime legislation is really the appropriate vehicle to address LGBT-related violence. It is clear in many of the cases of homicide and assault that gay men were targeted for occurred because they were gay. However, in a number of other cases, it appears they were targeted for money or for likely triggering some extreme internalized homophobia on the part of the assailant. In these circumstances, the victim's existence as gay is irrelevant because the motive was something other than attacking the victim because they were gay.

Even if motive-based, sentence enhancement "hate crime" legislation were ready to be adopted, I think there is a several decade evolution of police professionalization and community oversight that has occurred in most developed countries that is totally absent in here in the Philippines. We do not have police commissions or regular legislative inquiries into allegations of police misconduct, unless the police misconduct is part of some bigger conspiracy like rigging elections or corruption. I am not aware of systematic contesting of police overstepping through litigation.

The movement to demand that the laws be enforced equally against assailants of LGBT victims as they are of straight victims or of lower-class victims as they are of upper-class victims must precede the push for hate crime legislation. Each barangay or municipality should have a PNP oversight board composed of a few people (3 or 5) that are not and cannot hold elective office or any position of public profit (i.e. government workers, teachers, etc.,) that have rotating, non-renewable terms of 4-5 years and are appointed by the mayor in office with the agreement of the council or a majority of barangay captains. They should have the power to oversee investigations into police misconduct, malfeasance, misfeasance and/or nonfeasance and have power to remedy misconduct or nonfeasance, etc.,. In the US, many of these bodies actually appoint the OIC of the police for specific geographical areas!

Hate crime legislation enacted without this intermediate step is likely to be used by wealthy people who already have contacts with the PNP to do something and will not help aid better, more equitable enforcement of current laws. Murder was and continues to be illegal in the Philippines and the lack of hate crime legislation is not the primary reason why the assailants of LGBT victims have not been put in jail. It is a failure of the PNP to administer criminal justice in a fair and equitable way and, in this way, deprives the entire country of the rule of law.

These are the kinds of arguments that support LGBT people that can easily link to other groups who also suffer from the homophobic and misogynistic inclinations of the PNP collective spirit. The PNP is composed mostly of lower middle class and working class as the non-commissioned officers. Yet, the PNP is not the most receptive to crimes against the poor. Most of it can easily be corrected if there is some non-political, non-PNP oversight by the public. Why is it when a wealthy mayor is murdered a task force is formed and a dozen police are assigned to investigate, but when a gay man (who is not a mayor) is murdered there isn't enough personnel to conduct the most rudimentary investigation?

This requires reform of the administration of criminal justice in the Philippines. Real reform. When the laws are enforced as written, then we can see if motive-based sentence enhancements are appropriate or even necessary. What good is another law if it will not be enforced?

Movie Review: Fabulous! The Story of Queer Cinema

2011-07-27T10:38:00.000+08:00

This is certainly not the Celluloid Closet! My reaction was mostly to see how much of my adolescence and adult perspective were influenced by the developments of America's Queer Cinema! Who knew? I think it does an excellent job of telling the story -- although I would have added more Gregg Araki, like an interview or something. I would add it to the gay studies list of documentaries. And without giving anything more, let's be thankful the cost of producing movies has come down so much.

Amy Winehouse, 27

2011-07-24T14:05:00.001+08:00

Book Review: Recruiting Young Love

2011-07-22T14:20:00.000+08:00

Mark Jordan is the Richard Reinhold Niebuhr Professor of Divinity at the Harvard Divinity School. He wrote this book as a sequel to his 1997 award winning book The Invention of Sodomy in Christian Theology.

I was attracted to this book because of my abiding interest in the interaction with social LGBT type movements and religion. It happens that most of the work being produced these days focuses on American Christian sects. If you consider some of the other books I have reviewed here, you will come to see my belief that American Christian sects had a tremendous shaping of LGBT identities in the US and globally: God Hates Fags, How the Religious Right Shaped Lesbian and Gay Activism, Same-Sex Unions in Premodern Europe and Straight to Jesus. But, of course, the books I have reviewed here have not been limited to Christianity: With Respect to Sex, and The Hindus, An Alternative History.

This book, in some ways, reverses the proposition of How the Religious Right Shaped Lesbian and Gay Activism. It could have been titled How Lesbian and Gay Existence Shaped Religion.

Jordan is a Foucauldean and a theologian which, after much thought, is actually quite consistent. He does a genealogy of the present religious understandings of sexuality. He shows how both the liberal and conservative church reactions to the changes of scientific understanding of sexuality and sex were not theological (or only very superficially theological). Rather, the churches completely give up theological positions and enter into the rhetorical field of modern psychiatry, psychology, sexology and biology and just paste over some out-of-context biblical citations to rationalize the position.

Now, I'm not a theologian so it took me a few chapters to understand this. You see, theology is not reading a biology textbook and then making judgments about what you read and then finding Biblical passages to support your judgments. That is what political activists do. Theology is supposed to be a science itself so you can see by giving up the entire field to modern medicine, sexology or psychology and then backing in with Biblical passages eliminates the relevance or focus of theology (which is the study of God).

The other point that Jordan touches on, but unfortunately, does not do well or completely with a Foucauldean method is how American gays create myths and rituals to contain the affect of their life (He focuses on the consequences of AIDS to vibrant gay communities). Of course, I'm a Jungian so I would think that. I do think that Christian symbolism and ritual heavily shaped American gay identity. However, I don't think LGBT is the post-Christian. Human beings gravitate as a group by symbols. Christians borrowed and gays borrow, but nobody considers Christians to be post-Krishnas or post-Buddhists because themes were mixed and borrowed until significantly limited by the Nicene Council.

I found the Foucauldean method to be a little burdensome but the book kept my interest through out. I have even put his first book on order.

The version I read was a 296 page hardcover published by University of Chicago Press (April 15, 2011), ISBN-13: 978-0226410449. It is written in English. The lowest price I found online was used at abebooks.com and amazon.com.

Book Review: Unplugging the Constitution

2011-07-07T18:08:00.001+08:00

Florin T. Hilbay is an assistant professor of law at the University of the Philippines, College of Law.

I have to tell you that I debated whether to do a book review of this book at all (or not). As you may wonder, why this kind of a book would be on my blog since I have only once before reviewed a book by a Filipino author and only once before reviewed a book with a minor, tangential LGBT theme.

I totally disliked Hilbay's language. It was unnecessarily complicated. His choice of words did not add clarity or precision to the ideas he was trying to convey. Rather, it just showed that he has a wide command of obscure English words (or can intelligently use a Thesaurus) to produce obtuse phrases that shroud his texts in near meaninglessness.

That being said, it was a non-LGBT chapter I found the most interesting. I agree with many of the points he makes throughout the book. I don't agree with some of the reasoning. I don't know if I would call him a post-structuralist, in the Foucauldean or Deleuzean sense, but he has the social science structuralist reasoning down. I also believe the over emphasis on the language of things itself is overly deterministic and improperly allocates too much of the truth and the good life to the neocortex.

His essay on eliminating the publication of rank of bar exam finishers and reducing the breadth of the bar exam, I agree with. In the first instance, I don't believe the results of any professional licensing exam should be publicized other than to list those that passed. No other information should be given out. It has no logical connection to the purpose of the examination, assessing entry level competence. It says nothing about future competency levels, or competency level in a particular area of practice (even for professions like nursing). Ranking of an entry-level competency exam is absurd and runs counter to the purpose of professionalization through entry-level competency exams.

With respect to the legal profession and bar examination content, I also agree. The purpose of the bar examination should be to determine whether the potential lawyer has adequate legal reasoning and has a fundamental knowledge of the major aspects of law. A four day, all day bar examination with hundreds of subjects doesn't do that at all. It only tests for competency as a medieval Spanish scribe. It has the corrosive effect of having law schools teach to the exam as opposed to developing critical, legal reasoning skills and competency in areas of interest (commercial law, public law, tax law, etc.,.) The first five years of a legal practice should not be learning to be a lawyer in a particular subject area of the law. It should be developing experience!

Now this is the controversial part of my review and if you think I've become a counterrevolutionary with what I'm about to say, so be it. Get your bundle of sticks, fire and stake ready for me. I thought I'd have tremendous affinity for his essay "Undoing Marriage". First, his convoluted, unnecessarily complicated language makes it difficult to get to the bottom of things. Second, he repeatedly states that there are no reasons why the state should or would prefer life-time heterosexual partnering.

Look, I spent most of my adolescent and adult life opposed to the institution of marriage for legal and political reasons (although I have off and on supported same-sex marriage causes around the world when the practical debate has been either for or against it). Nevertheless, I can write down a long list of reasons why the state might prefer life-time heterosexual partnering over a libertarian free for all. The most relevant part (in my mind) is consistency and tradition. That's right, I said it. Not every human being can be a bar topnotcher post-structuralist law professor who idealizes two-women/one-man threesome relationships like Hilbay does.

Most people do not have the capacity or interest in exploring creative ways of human intimacy. And that's okay! At present, all the law needs to do is recognize the fact that the range of human intimate relations is much more expansive than life-time heterosexual marriages. Let's look at American jurisprudence for a moment to show how a small change in the law can have major impacts in the span of two generations. In the 1960s, the U.S. Supreme Court held that marriage couples have the right to medical information and medicine about family planning and contraception from their doctors.

That little case opened the flood-gate to recalibrating the landscape of socially permitted sexual and intimate expression: the right to contraception, the right to possess pornography, the right to have an abortion, the right to privacy, the right to be free from discrimination against homosexuality, the right to same-sex marriage, right to be free from discrimination based on illegitimacy, etc.,. That original case about the right of a married couple to medical information and contraception from their doctor can be found at the beginning of precedent all over the world where children's women's and gay rights are concerned.

You see, the law, in many cases doesn't need to have such sweeping changes in order to affect major changes in social policy. Allowing divorce, de-genderizing the Family Code and modernizing estate law may be enough to effect the change that Hilbay appears to be seeking. Of those three goals, allowing divorce and modernizing estate law are really the only two that need legislative approval. The other problems that are associated with our current system of marriage, if they cannot be legislatively cured, are all matters that can and should be adjudicated in the constitutional realm. All of the provisions intertwining the church with the state in marriage are unconstitutional. Case law developing the reasoning behind that may other areas of church state separation problems. Discrimination based upon legitimacy is a clear violation of the Due Process clause and developing case law on the reasoning for finding such a violation will help to support other areas of freedom of intimacy. But its not necessarily logical or complete but the process remains open and moving towards a new way of living life. That is the promise of jurisprudence as opposed to statutory utopian visions.

I believe that it is the process of developing jurisprudence that is in line with the more primitive parts of the brain (like the mammalian limbic system) that demands incremental changes in this manner over wholesale systematic changes. Sometimes the incremental changes in the soul are unnoticed but when the moment comes, the conservative inertia is swept aside for a new beginning and then, the long peace. This method also allow minimizes the fascist potential. Look at something like the RH bill (which is really incremental itself, but you see how revolutionary something so simple can be?). Apparently not incremental enough for the reactionary right and their followers. It is true that we constantly and unconscious depoliticize much of how we structure our life.

Critical awareness is needed to counter that and to develop ways to live a more meaningful life. But a meaningful life does not come from the Family Code and therefore its abolition or reformation will not increase the chances of a meaningful life.

The version I read was a 316 page paperback published by the University of the Philippines (January 30, 2010), ISBN-13: 978-9715426206. It is written in English. I bought it at the Diliman campus and well, at P380, it looks a lot cheaper than online.

Book Review: Manhood

2011-07-03T18:30:00.000+08:00

Mels van Driel is a urologist and sexologist attached to the University Medical Centre in Groningen. He wrote Manhood: The Rise and Fall of the Penis.

I can't fully remember how this ended up in my collection or why I decided to read it. I was under the impression I was going to be getting a concise "history of ideas" about the penis. But actually, this book is a whole lot more. This is book is much more than a history of ideas type philosophical rumination on the epistemology of the penis. Instead, it part that, part ethnographic self-reflection, and part medical manual on the male sexual system.

The book is filled with all sorts of strange and curious facts about urological disorders but also delves into medical history and the socio-political history that informed medical inquiry.

I think the translation could have been a little bit better and the title is funny as a double entendre except that the connotative meaning doesn't line up (no pun intended) with the point of the book as the author himself rightly describes in chapter one: the testicles were the focus of male sex fixations until the 19th century for pretty much everyone.

In one way, I think I was expected the next installment of a book like Susan Bordo's Male Body, but it is nothing of the sort. It's partly an extended men's health magazine article on every conceivable urological problem (did you know the penis can break?) and partly a essay on the history of medical knowledge (in urology).

It's practical orientation makes it an easy read and again, let me stress, I think every man should read the book.

The version I read was a 288 page paperback published by Reaktion Books (January 30, 2010), ISBN-13: 978-1861895424. It is written in English. The lowest price I found online was used at abebooks.com.

Movie Review: Hard

2011-07-01T18:00:00.001+08:00

For one reason or another, this movie remained off the radar for 12 years. I don't know how it happened. I had thought how interesting it would be to have a gay cop-thriller type movie. And, voila, a gay cop-thriller type movie appears. Of course, its dated a little bit and sometimes I myself forget what was normative just 10 years ago. Like I almost wonder, how do we do a gay cop-thriller type movie that doesn't have the cliched millennial-pride tropes of just a decade ago. I think of the various Law and Order episodes and well, frankly, the heterosexual womanizing detective is usually a cameo appearance in a single episode.

This is the plot summary: Paired with veteran lawman Tom -- one of many macho guys on the police force -- rookie detective Raymond is excited about his new promotion ... but he's terrified that someone will discover he's in the closet. While staking out his favorite gay bar one night for a serial killer of gay hustlers, Vates meets an attractive man and spends the night with him -- only to wake up and be told by his bedmate that he is, in fact, the brutal serial killer.

Detective, let me introduce you to your prime suspect...

Now, when I think of early gay-themed suspense films, I think of Hitchcock's Rope. But what if Saboteur or Shadow of a Doubt were gay-themed -- Shadow of a Doubt would have all the incestuous, highly erotic tension of Lihim ni Antonio without the Uncle Jonbert/Tong action. Strangers on a Train would be easy to change to a gay-theme with a married gay guy trying to off his wife -- after all Farley Granger was gay in real life. Even Vertigo could be rewritten to be gay-themed.

In any event, looking back at the movie at hand through the lens before television's Law and Order became a franchise, the director did a fantastic job. I won't ruin the ending, but this goes on the date night list.

Movie Review: Tan Lines

2011-06-22T13:00:00.000+08:00

Australia is a beautiful place. This movie reminds me of the movie Shelter although I think this movie came out the year before Shelter. This is another coming of age movie. Although the entire film is not executed perfectly, the key theme (in my mind), which is how totally undefined the road from childhood to adulthood is, comes into extreme focus. It is seemingly chance encounters that bridges the fragments of our lives into relationship, into transition. Let us call this the strange attractor. That is, a symbol appears upon which the outline of our psyche becomes evident for a short period and the pattern is momentarily revealed in the complexity of one's being.

Life is very much like the ebb and flow of surfing. We do travel a bit off shore. We wait patiently for the patterns to emerge and catch a wave. It is not just any wave but one that we believe we can successfully catch and that we can ride. We ride it to shore and then turn around and paddle back out to wait. Riding and paddling and waiting. Our own subject position may obscure this beautiful pattern. And only when much time has passed and the grains of space have been compacted by time can we enjoy the layers of beauty of our life from the diagenesis of time.

It is when a symbol appears that the shallow surface is washed away revealing this process. This movie does a great job of showing this as one jumps from childhood to adulthood.

Movie Review: Fixing Frank

2011-06-21T13:00:00.001+08:00

If you want to watch craziness unfold over the course of two hours, this is a master mind-fuck movie. It's like a low budget version of Inception but the main character is a tortured gay guy as opposed to the son of a billionaire. The plot:

At the urging of his psychologist boyfriend, Jonathan, an investigative reporter Frank sets to work on a expose of Dr. Arthurt Apsey, another psychologist who is known for his controversial work in 'curing' homosexuality. Posing as a gay patient who wants to 'convert,' Frank enlists in a course of treatment --and soon finds that the sessions stir up unsettling questions and doubts about his sexuality and identity.

I think the short of it here, if there's a lesson to be learned, is that unless you know what you're wagering, don't bet the farm. Of course, I personally believe in the reality of the psyche. I think fucking with one own's psyche is pretty serious, but to fuck with another's is really a bad -- and well, really really bad if you're a psychologist and you fuck with your boyfriend's psyche. It's like sleeping with a client. Unless you're a father of psychology, that kind of therapy is generally counter-indicated.

In any event, it was a thoughtful piece. It may be a little heady for a date movie, but the discussion after would likely be fascinating.

Movie Review: Freshman Orientation

2011-06-20T13:40:00.000+08:00

I was concerned that this would just be another coming-of-age bore like an American Pie type thing with some gay thematic impulse. I was quite surprised. Here's the official blurb:

College freshman Clay (Sam Huntington) impulsively decides to play along when the girl of his dreams mistakenly thinks he's gay. The comic ruse takes Clay to the lively center of the college's gay community, campus activism and harassment by fraternities. Ending up with much more than he bargained for, Clay winds up instigating a college-wide transformation of ideas toward sexual identity and social politics on campus.

It was enjoyable to reflect on my own time in college and how, if I knew then what I know now, my whole life would have been very different. What would have my college life looked like? I probably would have surfed much more often. I think there were whole semesters when I didn't get out into the water. I probably would have gotten an on campus job. And most importantly, I probably would have socialized with other young gay guys leading to age-appropriate dating.

Above is Sam Huntington, the lead actor, and his supporting actor, Mike Erwin. You will actually see a number of cameos of famous people. Rachel Dratch does a great job with her character. In any event, I enjoyed the movie and I thought it had something relevant to say about university politics -- much more than the Porky's and American Pie variety. It has a pro-gay theme but is not strictly a gay movie. It is a light-hearted romantic comedy.

Movie Review: Boys in the Band

2011-06-19T13:00:00.001+08:00

It's been many years since I saw this movie and frankly, I didn't remember much about it. That might be because I saw it when I was just a teenager living in the province. It was before I was ever exposed to urban (or quasi-urban) gay life.

Of course, the movie is tragic and brilliant and, given the way we are told about gay history these days, you would never imagine that the movie came out in 1970 based upon the successful off-Broadway play in the 1960s.

The story is of a barkada of gay guys in New York who go to one of the alpha gay's condo to celebrate the other alpha gay's birthday. The condo owner gets an unexpected call from a "married" friend who cries on the other line saying he's in the city and has to see him. He invites him to the party. This just brings out the worst in everyone and everything we associate with the negative shadow of the gay subculture (caddy, petty gossiping, anima possessed, etc., etc.,)

Robert La Tourneaux plays the Cowboy Tex hustler who is one of the friend's birthday gifts to the birthday boy. Robert was openly gay at that time and he never really got another role after the movie -- which he blamed on the movie at first. And I mention him (in addition to luring certain readers into watching the movie for no other reason) for the point, his life made. La Tourneaux died of AIDS in 1986 -- in his final years, he was taken care of by co-actor Cliff Gorman (to the right of Robert in the picture above) and Cliff's wife.

This is a historical movie of the first order that every self-identified gay man should watch.

Movie Review: Vacationland

2011-06-18T13:00:00.000+08:00

There are many coming-of-age gay flicks and, well, this is another one of them. It is supposedly the late adolescence of the filmamker. There is major chaos in this young man's life in Bangor, Maine. It's populated by ethically challenged teachers, child molesters and puerile, gender-bending alcoholics. Drugs, sex, and boundarylessness. The movie ends at the beginning of the interesting part.
It's like the white American version of Herbs life but probably only half as interesting. I'm neutral on recommending other people watching it. I guess if you want to study the psychology of neurosis in a rural New England town (and its similarities and differences to other places and times), then go ahead. But if you're looking for interesting or meaningful entertainment. I'd skip.

Movie Review: Touch of Pink

2011-06-17T14:25:00.002+08:00

This is one of a string of movies that I ended up watching although I don't recall why I had in on my list to watch. This was a nice surprise. It's warm but it is an excellent coming out story with layers of immigration, tribal-ethnic drama and so forth -- and what can I say, Jimi Mistry is a hottie and he does a great job being an uptight semi-closeted Muslim gay guy from Toronto.
But yeah, I doubt anyone else that reads this blog would agree with me. Kyle MacLachan plays Jimi's imaginary friend, the spirit of Cary Grant. Then there is Kris Holden-Ried who plays William Compton in The Tudors:
Anyways, this is a great date movie or a cuddle up with partner and stay in night kind of movie. The plot is fairly simple:

Alim (Jimi Mistry) moves from Canada to London so he can be out and proud without worrying about what his conservative mother, Nuru (Suleka Mathew), will think. There, he lives a carefree life with his boyfriend, Giles (Kristen Holden-Ried) ... until his mother announces she's coming for a visit. Alim's forced to hide any evidence that he's dating a white man instead of the nice Muslim girl his mother dreams of.

Yes yes and so much more. I totally recommend this for the cannon of top 100 gay films and would recommend as a top film for coming out narratives. I also enjoyed what I considered to be a universal theme of differentiation from the tribe and the impact of coming out may be for someone in a highly insular immigrant community and the secrets we hold for the sake of the tribal harmony.

Movie Review: Dream Boy

2011-06-16T13:00:00.001+08:00

This is not the movie review about that funny romantic comedy starring Papa Piolo. I don't actually recall how this ended up in my queue either but it did. The movie was shot very well, the plot was tightly written and well, it wasn't predictable. It reminded me a bit of my own adolescence. Here's the standard plot summary:

Shortly after his family moves to a backwater Louisiana town, shy teen Nathan makes advances toward his handsome fellow student, Roy, and soon their relationship blossoms into a secret romantic affair. Though constrained by a homophobic community and Nathan's abusive father, things take an unexpected turn when the truth eventually comes out.

This can be a date movie or a snuggle up with your partner kind of movie. But it can also be a bit painful to watch. The tenderness is worth the heart ache.

Movie Review: Release

2011-06-15T13:00:00.000+08:00

I don't recall requesting this movie, but here it is. I first became aware of it about a week ago -- as a trailer to another movie, but its been in my queue for sometime, apparently. In any event, this movie only has a very very vague plot and Wayne Virgo.

If you have to choose between Release and Shank, that has almost the same cast, I'd pick Shank. I also am developing an intolerance to gratuitous violence and well, prison life has lots of gratuitous violence. I also found the love-making scenes a little far-fetched, especially in light of the entire plot. In any event, if you have issues with religion, prison fantasies, have a stake in the euthanasia debate or just like gratuitous violence, this is the movie to watch. Shank is way more violent, but is more focused.

When Going to Anilao, Batangas...

2011-06-14T05:00:00.002+08:00

We go to Anilao every so often to snorkel -- that is floating on top of the water and looking at the marine life below. It can be done and I suggest doing it. You just need to get a boat and go early in the morning. Do not land at Sombrero Island. There is nothing there and its overpriced. However, do snorkel in the waters just off the other side of Sombrero Island (the opposite side from the resort). Just make sure you know how to swim or you use a rope because the current will occasionally come up suddenly and its strong.

We used Captain Carding Masangcay and his boat, the Happy Dolphin. In fact, two out of the three days we went out, we encountered a pod of dolphins -- one day the dolphins played along side the boat for a while. If you decide to go consider

Captain Carding Masangcay
0906-473-3324,
0915-2244178 or
0919-2702081.

If you can coordinate transportation to Mabini in the early morning, he may be able to suggest a place to crash if you and your barkada want to spend the night and where to find masks, if you don't have your own. There are MANY hotels and resorts along the Calumpang Peninsula of Anilao -- but I have no recommendations. Some have at-shore coral reefs for further snorkeling and some don't. He can perhaps help with your budget.

If you stay at a resort, make sure you leave for your morning snorkel by 7 or 730 am latest. Snorkeling requires a different set of meteorological conditions than diving and the wind and currents become more unpredictable the later you go out -- this is not necessarily true for diving and, well, dive resorts don't fully understand that.

Here are some pictures I shot. I myself was not snorkeling but free diving and these close ups were about 5 and 6 meters deep (except the one below with the sergeant and butterfly fish that's at the suraace). You can still see most of the beauty of marine Philippines floating at the surface with a mask.

Chaos and Wonton

2011-06-13T14:20:00.000+08:00

混沌 chaos

餛飩 wonton

chaos uses 水 (water radical)
wonton uses 食 (food radical)

混沌 chaos
餛飩 wonton

Movie Review: Is It Just Me?

2011-06-10T07:31:00.001+08:00

If I had decided to watch this movie because of its poster, I wouldn't have. Boo to the poster. In any event, the movie is about a guy who can't find true love because he's neurotic. His roommate is a slasher movie actor and go-go boy. He meets the man of his dreams whose a young Texan man through a phone dating service. But then there are some twist and turns when the guy involves his roommate in the process. It has a happy ending and a smattering of men in various states of undress, so, well, it has something for everyone.

This is a date movie or a "cuddle up together and stay in" night movie.

Movie Review: The Big Gay Musical

2011-06-04T15:30:00.002+08:00

This was not exactly the light-hearted comedy I was looking to distract myself with this afternoon. Instead, I got a dose of remembering what it was like to be the only known bakla in my provincial high school. Today, I also happened to come across all these updates about people (some former friends) that I am no longer connected to who have blossomed into very openly gay professional gay activists and community organizers. In the movie, it is a young man who is the supporting lead in the musical that suffers. This musical is all about mocking the cruelty of modern fundamentalist Christian homophobia and heterosexism.

Yet, in the big gay musical of my life, the modern fundamentalist Christian homophobes have been more of a media image that I have only experienced through reports and stories. The cruelty I felt I suffered was at the hands of my fellow young closeted bakla (and perhaps fundamentally, myself, di ba?) who now have prominent openly-gay or gay-centered careers.

The movie was done well and they were able to get the musical parts and the plot weaved together so there was no clashing -- in fact, after a while you almost miss the fact that they show up, back on stage, to sing a tune that's directly related to the plot off-stage. This is not Were the World Mine, but it has some of the same themes. Be prepared if you were the loner, outcast, or ugly girl (thanks, Jewel) if you choose to watch the movie. I wasn't prepared.

Oh, and if that isn't your issue, the movie is full of white American gym bunnies in various states of undress -- on and off stage. This is like the 2010s offering to Trick genre. There is a bit of religious irreverence and critical humor on biblical literalism especially as it has been interpreted regarding homosexuality.

Pagsanjan Falls

2011-06-02T14:45:00.001+08:00

For all you travelers to Laguna, you can read all the blogs you want. Yes, for a while the official rate to get to Magdapio Falls of Cavinti Laguna, better known as Pagsanjan Falls, was P1000. In fact, you may see signs in Pagsanjan and Cavinti that breakdown all the fees and taxes that get you to P1000. However, that's no longer the current rate, and well, they haven't collected enough taxes to change the signs yet.

Unless you are looking to hook up with a young, dark and handsome accredited boat man that will run along side your bus or van attempting to solicit your business, I would suggest setting your course directly for the Pagsanjan Municipio. You can ask the OIC of the tourism desk what the standard fee is and which resorts you can go to to board a boat from without incurring extra fees. We did not do have to do this when I was a child. But of course, Pagsanjan didn't have thousands of unemployed, accredited boatmen waiting for you to embark to the Falls in their boat.

Is Pagsanjan still worth it? Absolutely. Nevertheless, if you are expecting Niagara Falls and you don't appreciate looking at nature, you may want to skip the trip because the journey through the narrow river valley to the falls is 95% of the experience. Get it?

Book Review: Same-Sex Unions in Premodern Europe

2011-05-09T14:30:00.000+08:00

John Boswell was a prominent historian and a professor at Yale University. He died in 1994 at the age of 47 related to AIDS complications. Many of Boswell's studies focused on the issue of homosexuality and religion, specifically homosexuality and Christianity.

Same-Sex Unions in Premodern Europe asserts, with an extensive reading of historical documents, that extensive same-sex unions similar to marriage existed in pre-Christian and Christian periods in Europe until the fifteenth century.

I resisted reading this when it first came out as The Marriage of Likeness: Same Sex Unions in Premodern Europe. And when I bought the book several years ago, it went onto my shelf, like a handful of books that I buy with a heart of ambivalence.

But I'm glad I read it now and not then. Of course, his entire program flies in the face of the Foucauldean-based Queer Theory and the post-structuralist based analysis that is characteristic of so-called Queer Theory. Several scholars have continued Boswell's work as "Gay and Lesbian Studies" and I suspect my own work would fall into this latter category, although when I was in graduate school, I always thought I would finish with something interesting in Queer Theory).

I am not an essentialist but I also do not believe that people with same-sex interests did not form identities before the nineteenth century Euro-America or did not maintain same-sex relationships -- especially where concubinage had legal recognition and marriage was primarily about property.

What I found the most interesting about this book, which was not Boswell's intention, was the relationship of an idealist, anti-body, ascetic religion like Christianity to something like marriage (which previously was about material wealth and more recently about fertility and sexuality). It turns out, that the relationship was quite tortured. It wasn't until the same time that spiritual movements associated with the Holy Spirit emerged in the twelfth and thirteenth century that challenged the power of the church hierarchy that marriage became a required religious "sacrament"!

Now we have the Catholic Bishops Conference of the Philippines pushing the Reproductive Health Bill when from the beginning Christianity pushed celibacy only. Celibacy was the highest virtue and everything else was a failure to live up to the highest spiritual aims of Christianity. Christianity rejected sexuality, the body, wealth. It was not a Christian value.

So what happened to same-sex unions in medieval Christianity? In the 1400-1500s, major homophobia entered into Western Europe and that also infected Christian theology. Boswell cites Dante for the proposition that gay sex was really only a small infraction for Christians (like others who were passionate in their sex) since they are on the highest rung of purgatory just out the gates of heaven! A major change obviously occurred shortly thereafter.

This leads me to again point out that the Catholic hierarchy of celibates are just not the right people to tell us about reproductive health. Reproduction is against the most fundamental tenets of Christianity and only became of interest when the hierarchy was losing its control over the masses and the political apparatus (1000 years ago).

The version I read was a 412 page paperback published by Villard (June 21, 1995), ISBN-13: 978-0679432289. It is written in English. The lowest price I found online was used at amazon.com.

Movie Review: 8: The Mormon Proposition

2011-05-08T13:22:00.000+08:00

I was stunned to learn that most people did not know the Mormon Church was directly behind the 1998 constitutional amendment in Hawai'i to ban same-sex marriage. I wrote about this subject incidentally here. A number of the documents in this documentary appeared in a webstie called Mormongate. They were fascinating, in part, because while I studied in Hawai'i (and yes, I even campaigned door to door for the NO campaign), I was familiar with all of the puppets and "public faces" of the YES campaign that were secretly being controlled by the Mormon Church. But, I was surprised because at least among the NO campaign workers, it seemed pretty clear that the Mormons were running everything. I guess most don't believe it until they see the signed memos.

It was this part of the documentary that I found most interesting. I've seen lots of same-sex marriage documentaries, some with directors from Hawai'i. It has been quite embarrassingly poor in detail or information. The next most interesting part of the documentary was on how the Mormon's actually ran the 2008 YES campaign on Proposition 8 in California. It was right out of the Hawai'i 1998 playbook, only this time the stakes were higher (Hawai'i population was ~ 1 million; California population was ~ 37 million). In the 2008 campaign in California, the Mormon Prophet, President and head council were open and not (as) secretive as they were in 1998 in Hawai'i. This was also very fascinating.

The rest of it was less interesting unless you don't know anything about Mormon and the dragging in of homeless Utah youth, well, I don't see the narrative relevance unless its to demonize Mormons or make some commentary on Mormonism.

It's definitely worth watching if you like historical documentaries.

Osama bin Mohammed bin Awad bin Laden, dead at 54

2011-05-05T00:37:00.003+08:00

Merry Labor Day!

2011-05-01T10:29:00.003+08:00

Book Review: The Hindus, An Alternative History

2011-04-24T06:31:00.001+08:00

Wendy Doniger, is an Indologist and Mircea Eliade Distinguished Service Professor of the History of Religions at the University of Chicago Divinity School, the Department of South Asian Languages and Civilizations, and the Committee on Social Thought. Her book was a comprehensive history of the development of Hinduism and its major religious themes.

I decided to write a book review of this book here, which is not a book focused on sexuality and gender identity. Nevertheless, her observations about sexuality and gender identity are fascinating and if you are interested in taking a graduate seminar in the history and development of Hinduism, with some focus on sexuality and gender identity, read this book.

As a Buddhist, I found some of her discussion on the rise and fall of different Hindu gods to be fascinating. I was stunned when traveling in Himal Pradesh to be told by a Shaiva that Indra was a god of the mist when in our religion, Indra is the king of the gods -- which like humans, die and are subject to the laws of rebirth and suffering. But as it turns out, Indra is the king of the gods in the traditional Vedic system but was displaced by the Vaishnavas and the Shaivas under the later developments in Hindu thinking. So, in other words, Indra really is the kind of the gods except when he's not! It doesn't really matter for a Buddhist because we don't worship Indra. Indra and the crew also pray to various Buddhas like the Green Tara just as we do.

I have written previously about the transgender sex workers of Hyderabad in my book review of With Respect to Sex and the potential for postcolonial analysis of gender identity and sexuality. A fascinating anecdote in the book of this review, Doniger writes:

The cross-dressing men of the Third Nature in the Kama-sutra may be the cultural ancestors of the Hijras of contemporary India, cross-dressing and sometimes castrated male homosexuals, often prostitutes, who worship the goddess Bahuchara Mata.* Perhaps fifty thousand strong in India today, the Hijras descend upon weddings, birth celebrations, and other occasions of fertility, dancing and singing to the beat of drums, offering their blessing or, if they are not paid, their curse, which may take the form of lifting their skirts to display the wound of their castration. Their ambivalent ability to blackmail through a combination of blessing and curse eventually struck a resonant chord with some government agency charged with tax collection. As a result, in 2006 the Municipal Corporation of Patna, the capital of Bihar, one of India's most impoverished states, hired about twenty Hijras to go from shop to shop (later from house to house), asking the owners to pay overdue municipal taxes, which apparently ran into the millions. The new tax collectors met with considerable success from their very first day on the job, often settling the outstanding arrears on the spot; in lieu of salary, they received 4 percent of the amount they collected.

* Bahuchara, meaning "Getting Around a Lot," is the same phrase that the mother of Satyakama, in the Upanishads, used to refer to her promiscuity.

I found the discussion on Tantra fascinating, even the more recent discussions, in the book. We are Tantric and it was not until I became an adult did I understand that Tantra is associated with "libertine" sexuality but after reading this book, I fully understand -- a similar understanding developed about Vatsyayana Mallanaga's Kama-sutra.

How, at almost 700 pages, the book is not for the faint of heart. If you are not interested in linguistics, religion, philosophy, history of South Asia, or have no connection to Indic religions, you may not be able to brave the entire book. If this book had come out a decade earlier, it would have saved me a lot of reading in graduate school.

The version I read was a 800 page paperback published by Penguin (Non-Classics) (November 30, 2010), ISBN-13: 978-0143116691. It is written in English. The lowest price I found online was at amazon.com.

Movie Review: Issues 101

2011-04-23T05:00:00.000+08:00

Suffice to say, I had never heard of this movie when it came out. But I am familiar with many gay themed movies that came out in the early 2000s and I'm certain that this movie had to have been shot in the early 1990s with the dress and hairstyles.

Much of the acting was very poor -- very very poor. It was not helped by the poor direction and I suspect by the time it got to the editors they did the best they could. The plot itself had a somewhat interesting flow, but, well, none of the characters developed enough for it to be interesting.

The most interesting line, which came 2/3ds of the way through: "I'm sorry but I'll have to cancel my subscription to your issues." If homoerotic tension, unrequited puppy love and drama are your thing, then you'll enjoy this movie a lot.

Movie Review: I Love You Phillip Morris

2011-04-16T14:03:00.000+08:00

This has got to be one of the funniest romantic comedies I've ever seen. And it's quite disturbing that, it is, with a few dramatic changes, a true story. I do not recommend extensively reading about Steven Jay Russell or Phillip Morris before watching this film. I happened to read the short article in Esquire. But other than that, nothing.

As you can see, Ewan McGregor and Jim Carrey play gay men who are in love. The story is about the crazy life of Steven Russell (played by Jim Carrey) and what kind of madness threads the life of a police officer who is married with child to gay con man, escape-artist felon. If you ever enjoyed Jerry Springer or Judge Judy and you like gay romantic comedies, this is the movie to watch.

Movie Review: Dorian Gray

2011-04-15T15:49:00.000+08:00

This movie, which was supported by Her Majesty's government in the funding department, is a cinematic revival of the haunting story by the late Oscar Wilde: The Picture of Dorian Gray. Although the bisexuality of Dorian Gray is toned down, I felt it still appropriate to relate my feelings on the film/story here.

If you have never read the Picture of Dorian Gray or heard about it. This is a classical negative puer eternus problem. Dorian, played by Ben Barnes, pictured below (not Colin Firth),
is a country bumpkin who comes to London and is trained by Lord Henry Wotton, played by Colin Firth, to be what we would popularly call hedonistic. He seeks his own pleasure without regard to the consequences to others or himself. And, when he first arrives in London, a portrait is painted of him to hang in his new digs which is hauntingly lifelike in its appearance of the dashing young man. During the painting, he is asked if he would sell his soul to the devil by having the portrait age and not him. He says he would and the mischief begins.

If you have ever been struck by the archetype of the puer eternus and you have never heard of this story, you can cheat (puerile trait) and watch this movie. Her Majesty's government was not let down in the execution of the script. It is just unfortunately that it would grossed $20 million world-wide. But then again, we are really a puerile global culture these days and with global warming and overpopulation, we are struggling with our own demons of the shadow negative puer. Definitely worth the watch.

Movie Review: Strange Fruit

2011-04-14T15:40:00.000+08:00

I did not have an understanding of the phrase "Strange Fruit" until after watching the movie. The movie itself is about a gay lawyer who has left his small Southern town in favor of a New York City. He returns, however, when gay high school friend has been killed lynching style. It's a suspense movie so I won't give any more details which could spoil the movie if you wish to see it.

What I found interesting is that the writers of the film show, in what ways, homophobia and anti-gay violence is similar to xenophobia or anti-Black violence. In other blogs, I have talked about how Southern evangelical ministers in the 1950s used various interpretations of the Bible to condemn racial integration and inter-racial marriages and how those same Biblical passages and interpretations have been moved over to use against LGBT rights and same-sex marriage. This movie does not look at the issue in such a direct political way but challenges the habit of Southern culture which has turned to the gay man as the new Other.

It is too bad that the movie didn't have more money because the story might have been helped a bit by Hollywood levels of funding. It's still a good movie given those constraints.

Movie Review: Boys Life 7

2011-04-11T15:26:00.000+08:00

I remember some of the previous Boys Life and, well, it's been a few years. I know that in the 1990s when the first two Boys Life came out, it was just what someone grouping up in the province needed. Yes, full length feature films about same-sex attraction and homosexuality were available. However, because of the capital-intensive nature of full length feature films in the 1980s and 1990s, the subject matters were quite limited (Gregg Araki's Totally F**ked Up and Doomed Generation perhaps being the two exceptions).

However, Boys Life, Boys Life 2, etc., opened up and avenue that is mostly eclipsed by youtube and other content providers of film shorts. Nevertheless, these short films where outside the narrow range of what was high on the return-for-investment and opened my eyes to the power of film in general and also the possibilities of life outside the provincial model and the alternative narrow bland cosmopolitan model presented by mass produced milquetoast films about same-sex attraction.

In Boys Life 7, the first short, "The Young and Evil" is disturbing in the way I imagine classical Tantric masters roamed the mountain kingdoms of the Himalayas overturning Vedic and post-Vedic hierarchy with their talk of divine sex and ritual consumption of bodily fluids. The second short, "Spokane" reminded me very much of undergraduate college years and the unspoken tragedy of sex with a straight-identified guy (in other words, without intimacy).

The third short "First Date" is hilarious because when the 90s occurred, I recall going on a few internet dates with crazy people like this and I identified with the young, overweight Asian guy in the story. It is a dark comedy but hilarious and this in itself is worth watching the entire show. And finally, the last short, is an exemplar of how I recall the Boys Life series, "Raw Love" is the latest commentary on high school unrequited love. If you identified with Tong in first scenes of make-out/sex between Tong and Nathan in Lihim Ni Antonio, you will likely have some kind of affective response to this short. You can see, from the movie poster, that "Raw Love" was the show stealer.

I would definitely watch to get an idea of the kinds of stories today's film makers are creating about a "boys life".

Movie Review: Men in the Nude (Férfiakt)

2011-04-08T15:10:00.000+08:00

I made the unusual mistake of not writing a review of this movie within a day of watching it. A big mistake, for the first time. I can't remember almost anything about the movie except there is this old guy that finds inspiration for life by picking up a 19 year old prostitute. It looks like his depressed life is about to turn around until the prostitute actually speeds up the unraveling. The fact that I can't remember much about this movie other than that, may give you some insight into why this review is so short. Nevertheless, some people like watching movies where the supporting actor is a young 19 year Hungarian prostitute.

Movie Review: Patrik, Age 1.5

2011-04-05T15:02:00.000+08:00

The plot of this movie is fairly straight forward and can be discerned by looking at the three image-clusters on the movie poster. 15 year old boy, typewritten text saying Patrik, Age 1 1/2, and then two gay men looking at a paper stunned. It was a light-hearted romantic comedy of sorts.

Two subtle techniques in the film that I found disturbing were (1) the ascetic/masochistic Christian principle that would drive a gay couple to accept a delinquent 15 year old boy in lieu of what they wanted, an infant; and (2) the redirection of surveillance techniques for infants used by a gay couple on a 15 year old delinquent boy.

Now, the movie progresses along and may be a nice date movie -- that is, so long as you don't have any deep commitment or abandonment issues. Curl up with a cup of hot chocolate or calamansi juice and watch. It has just enough surprises (if the two exceptions above don't repulse or creep you out) to make it enjoyable without being predictable.

Movie Review: La León

2011-04-02T14:53:00.000+08:00

Let me be the first to admit that I did not give this movie my undivided attention. As you know, there is this unspoken rule in movie making about the first ten minutes. The viewer needs some bait. And well, this movie turned out to be too formal for the bait. I was actually struck by the intense sex scene later in the movie because it seemed to break with the formal tone of the movie.

In any event, I watched the whole thing because the cinematography of an Argentinian jungle was too good to pass up. I could have watched it without the subtitles and the sound and I might have even enjoyed it more. It is also possible that failing to give the movie my undivided attention I missed the enchanting aspects of it and, therefore, can only praise the cinematography.

Movie Review: In the Mood for Love

2011-03-28T14:08:00.000+08:00

Yes. I admit it. I did not watch this movie when it first came out. What can I say? Not much. In any event, the cinematograph was just splendid as was the sound and music. Of course, the plot could have really been resolved in a short of about 40 minutes (tops). So, what made the movie worth blogging about especially since it finds itself topically in the penumbra of gay movies?

Glad you asked. Yumeji's Theme. Nothing like plunked violin strings for percussion with the lone violin with melody. This song affectively is "in the mood for love". It expresses unrequited love, hope, and even mamihlapinatapai. So, I didn't mind sitting through the whole movie. The cinematography was great and it was a nice harmony to the music.

Of course, it also stars Tony Leung Chiu-Wai, who looks a lot like several of my uncles who were young adults in the 1940s. In fact, I wonder if this movie was picked up by the coffee babies because of him. Or is it because its a Kar Wai Wong movie?

Movie Review: A Siren in the Dark

2011-03-27T16:03:00.000+08:00

A Siren in the Dark held a lot of promise. A gay thriller. However, there was too much inconsistent polymorphous rural sexuality that made it evident that it started to just look like amateur pandering to the prurient interests. The plot thread was interesting but it was poorly executed.

Here is main character/siren, Orion Cross, who I discovered researching for this very short blog post, that he does both stage acting and "adult entertainment." Actually on IMDb, most of his screen credits are "adult entertainment."

Movie Review: Soul Maid

2011-03-26T15:41:00.000+08:00

This is another one of these movies that simply crept onto my queue without my full conscious awareness. And that's fine. This movie is one part fairy tale and three parts the odyssey of the mind (the anima-possession appears in the form of a goddess/demoness known as Glitentica). Since I enjoy looking at snippets of the abyss of the psyche.

Its too bad that they didn't get more money. A bigger budget would have really helped. But, it is what it is. A young gay man who suffers from seizures suddenly has religious visions and well, the battle over anima possession begins.

Moses and David

What does Moses hear in his visions and what kingdom is David fated to establish? You'll have to watch to know.

Give it Up to God for Lent, Bro

2011-03-17T01:46:00.001+08:00

I think the Catholic Bishops need to give up worldly politics for lent. I know it will be hard, but isn't that what Christian do for lent? Make sacrifices of worldly things?

Coco Martin

2011-03-13T10:45:00.000+08:00

has a major major lisp. How did I never hear that before?

Hawaii Philippines Tsunami Warnings Issued -- Get to Higher Ground

2011-03-11T16:27:00.000+08:00

for Philippines, Hawai'i and the entire Pacific Rim.

Pacific Tsunami Warning Center

A TSUNAMI IS A SERIES OF LONG OCEAN WAVES. EACH INDIVIDUAL WAVE CREST CAN LAST 5 TO 15 MINUTES OR MORE AND EXTENSIVELY FLOOD COASTAL AREAS. THE DANGER CAN CONTINUE FOR MANY HOURS AFTER THE INITIAL WAVE AS SUBSEQUENT WAVES ARRIVE. TSUNAMI WAVE HEIGHTS CANNOT BE PREDICTED AND THE FIRST WAVE MAY NOT BE THE LARGEST. TSUNAMI WAVES EFFICIENTLY WRAP AROUND ISLANDS.ALL SHORES ARE AT RISK NO MATTER WHICH DIRECTION THEY FACE. THE TROUGH OF A TSUNAMI WAVE MAY TEMPORARILY EXPOSE THE SEAFLOOR BUT THE AREA WILL QUICKLY FLOOD AGAIN. EXTREMELY STRONG AND UNUSUAL NEARSHORE CURRENTS CAN ACCOMPANY A TSUNAMI. DEBRIS PICKED UP AND CARRIED BY A TSUNAMI AMPLIFIES ITS DESTRUCTIVE POWER. SIMULTANEOUS HIGH TIDES OR HIGH SURF CAN SIGNIFICANTLY INCREASE THE TSUNAMI HAZARD.

Philippines: (first wave: 5:50pm)

Officials of the Philippine Institute of Volcanology and Seismology estimated the first tsunami waves to reach the Philippine coasts around 5:50 p.m. today.

Philippine Tsunami Bulletin No. 2

Philippine Tsunami Bulletin No. 1

Hawai'i: (first wave: 2:55am)

A TSUNAMI HAS BEEN GENERATED THAT COULD CAUSE DAMAGE ALONG COASTLINES OF ALL ISLANDS IN THE STATE OF HAWAII. URGENT ACTION SHOULD BE TAKEN TO PROTECT LIVES AND PROPERTY.

Tsunami FAQ

2011-03-11T16:22:00.000+08:00

Pacific Tsunami Warning Center FAQ

Tsunami Watch/Warning Issued - Get to Higher Ground

2011-03-11T15:40:00.008+08:00

Movie Review: Plan B

2011-03-08T23:50:00.001+08:00

I don't recall why this ended up in my queue to watch. But there it was. I reviewed the plot summary before I watched it just to refresh myself about what exactly I was going to be watching. The summary stated:

After his girlfriend, Laura (Mercedes Quinteros), dumps him and takes up with handsome charmer Pablo (Lucas Ferraro), Bruno (Manuel Vignau) plots revenge: He tries to come between the new lovers. But his plan -- which entails a growing friendship with Pablo -- soon takes an unexpected turn. Though Laura still goes out with Bruno now and again, his sexuality comes into question in this Argentinean import from first-time director Marco Berger.

Since I'm writing about it, I'm sure you have some idea what that unexpected turn was. I enjoyed the movie, in part because, the whole movie was one long seduction, but the movie ends where its not clear who precisely was seducing whom. As the plot summary implies, Bruno is seducer. But whom is he seducing? Initially it appears he's seducing Pablo, but the novelty of this movie is that Bruno's unconscious homosexuality, which overpowers him like Paul's unconscious Christ complex appearing like before him on the road, appears to be seducing Bruno himself.

Lucas Ferraro, pictured above, plays Pablo and acts in a way that reminded me of Gael Garcia Bernal. I wonder what citybuoy thinks.

Happy New Year (Buddhist)!

2011-03-05T23:59:00.001+08:00

May the doctrine of the Buddha flourish.
May we have long life.
May all harmful obstacles be pacified.
May sickness, famine, agitation and strife be pacified.
May prosperity flourish.
May central and border countries be happy.
May life, merit, influence and realization flourish.
May the crops be good.
May genuine happiness abide in all our hearts.

Movie Review: Spring Fever 春风沉醉的晚上

2011-02-25T14:16:00.003+08:00

Okay. For your information, the English translation of the movie title really really sucks. 春风沉醉的晚上 means Drunken Faggot, Hidden Drag Queen. Just kidding. It means A Night Deeply Drunk on the Spring Breeze. Spring Fever is Lou Ye's newest movie filmed and presented to the public during a five year ban imposed on Lou Ye and shot secretly in Nanjing.

Like Summer Palace, it suffers a "too long" problem. There is one too many subplots and well, the liberal suturing of these subplots together makes its 'almost' nonlinear except that there is a narrative and it is linear. The movie is so saturated in emotion that it's worth watching just to feel uncomfortable at certain points with its hauntingly real emotional presence. The actors just do such a brilliant job together you forget you are watching a movie. Chen Sicheng's character of Luo Haitao (pictured above, right) reminds me of one of the coffee babies. Which one?

I would not watch this is nonlinear/dissociative films are not your thing or you can't give the movie your undivided attention.

US gov't ends defense of anti-gay marriage law

2011-02-24T02:55:00.000+08:00

as reported in the New York Times.

Movie Review: End of Love

2011-02-22T13:45:00.001+08:00

I decided to use this picture above because its the one on the movie poster. But it would not be my first choice for this movie. I'd rather have used the one below:

For the last year, I have been averaging a death of a close friend or family member about one a month. The movie Amphetamine another recent Hongkong film, also touched me deeply on its comment regarding fate, drug use, sex and the confusion of growing up, growing old, getting sick and dying.

This movie is similar, in a less cinematographic way, in that it touches on these themes, including various themes of the mother complex. Simon Chung does a great job. This is perhaps the best he's done so far. Innocent and First Love and Other Pains were both okay. But this really does an excellent job of tying life's suffering together.

Since all of the deaths recently have been Christian, I thought I'd share this verse I found to be relevant (and consistent with Buddhism's non-theistic teachings):

Alalahanin mo rin naman ang Maylalang sa iyo sa mga kaarawan ng iyong kabataan, bago dumating ang mga masamang araw, at ang mga taon ay lumapit, pagka iyong sasabihin, Wala akong kaluguran sa mga yaon;
Bago ang araw, at ang liwanag, at ang buwan, at ang mga bituin ay magdilim, at ang mga alapaap ay magsibalik pagkatapos ng ulan.

Sa kaarawan na ang mga tagapagingat ng bahay ay manganginginig, at ang mga malakas na lalake ay mapapayukod, at ang mga manggigiling ay mangaglilikat sapagka't sila'y kaunti, at yaong nagsisidungaw sa mga dungawan ay mangasisilaw,

At ang mga pintuan ay sasarhan sa mga lansangan; pagka ang tunog ng giling ay humina, at ang isa'y babangon sa tinig ng ibon, at lahat ng mga anak na babae ng tugtugin ay mabababa;

Oo, sila'y mangatatakot sa mataas, at ang mga kakilabutan ay mapapasa daan; at ang puno ng almendro ay mamumulaklak; at ang balang ay magiging pasan, at ang pita ay manglulupaypay: sapagka't ang tao ay pumapanaw sa kaniyang malaong tahanan, at ang mga tagapanangis ay nagsisigala sa mga lansangan:

Bago ang panaling pilak ay mapatid, o ang mangkok na ginto ay mabasag, o ang banga ay mabasag sa bukal, o ang gulong ay masira sa balon;

At ang alabok ay mauuwi sa lupa gaya ng una, at ang diwa ay mababalik sa Dios na nagbigay sa kaniya.

This movie is not told in a simple chronological narrative so viewers that like that will find the nonlinear story telling and flashbacks to be disjunctive. However, I rate this as a must watch movie. Love and drug addiction expose the deep interdependence of a single life. Addiction is a fascinating site to tell the story of life and the suffering of life.

Terence Vien Tagorda

2011-02-17T16:20:00.003+08:00

RIP
Terence Vien Tagorda
May 12, 1984 - February 14, 2011

God Save the Egyptian People

2011-02-12T05:00:00.000+08:00

The Dictator is Gone

God Save the Egyptian People.

Two Steps Back for Indonesia

2011-02-01T02:44:00.001+08:00

Ariel Irham

Indonesian judges have sent wildly popular Javanese pop star Ariel Irham, pictured above, to jail for over three years because his friends took some sex videos he took of him and his girlfriends sent them out into the world and they went viral. Read more from the AP.

As the youth of Indonesia grow up, the grip of puritanical religious backwardism prevails.

Ugandan Gay Activist Assassinated

2011-01-28T01:20:00.000+08:00

RIP

David Kato Kisule

"Uganda's Rolling Stone newspaper published the photographs of several people it said were gay next to a headline reading "Hang them"." from BBC.

from GayUganda site

Hawaii to Have Openly Gay Justice

2011-01-27T15:35:00.002+08:00

McKenna is named to state's high court

"McKenna would be the first openly gay member of the Hawaii Supreme Court."