EDITORIAL - Silly or out of the box? Could be both.

Cebu Governor Gwendolyn Garcia has one word for all of the proposals provincial board member Arleigh Sitoy has submitted for consideration lately: “Silly.” Stung by the description, Sitoy gave a privilege speech, defending his proposals as products of thinking “out of the box.”

The governor, of course, is entitled to her own opinion. But since almost every word that leaves the governor’s lips becomes a matter of public interest, it might be best to revisit the proposals of Sitoy to see why they failed to impress the governor.

The Sitoy proposals are: Require separate toilets for gays. Require health warnings on chicharon products. Require a wife’s consent for all purchases of sex stimulants by the husband. After Gwen handed down the “silly” tag, Sitoy added: Bring back bikinis to beauty contests.

Not wanting to upstage the governor, we will leave our own adjective out of the picture. As to the public, it can come up with its own without much prodding by anyone. And presuming the PB has a finger on the public pulse, we will pretty soon see how it treats the Sitoy proposals.

So, the standing nomenclature is “silly.” Let us leave it at that. But we are not comfortable either with how Sitoy describes his proposals. To say one is thinking out of the box is to suggest one is open-minded, ingenious, unconventional, one who can see what others don’t.

These are rather big words that, by themselves, inspire awe and admiration, feelings that are unfortunately absent when we revisit the proposals that provoked this discussion in the first place. Indeed, the feeling one gets is an overwhelming desire to just stay put inside the box.

If gays are not demanding separate CRs, why should Sitoy? If Sitoy had a stroke after eating a kilo of chicharon, why blame the chicharon? A wife’s consent, for Viagra or anything else, is something you clear at home, not legislate. As to longing for bikinis again, well....

By the way, in case you have not noticed, all the proposals, except for the chicharon thingy, seem to deal directly or indirectly with sex. We don’t know if this is by accident or design, but it sure looks like someone’s trying to break free. Out of the box.