Quack whack

“What should a parent do if a child shows early signs of being gay?”. With this question, tv personality and broadsheet columnist Tintin Bersola-Babao opened the door to mud.  Lots of mud, slung her way by netizens and activists.  From recriminations to insults, including (and I quote from the Philippine Star website itself) ‘bigoted,’ ‘insensitive,’ and ‘ignorant,’ Ms. Babao reaped a rather impressive collection of negative publicity in the span of a few days.

The psychologist she interviewed (and never corrected or rebutted), a Dr. Camille Garcia, fared even worse, with many questioning her credentials, and “quack” transformed to an adjective to describe her.

So how did these two answer the fatal question, exactly, to merit this treatment? Horribly, to tell you my opinion.  First, the good doctor starts her ill-considered diatribe by advising parents to ‘arrest the situation’. She says, do not encourage the child, but rather, a parent must talk to the child, and “explain that he is a boy and therefore, as boys, they grow up as men and their partners are women.”

Now talking probably sounds, on the surface, a reasonable thing to do, but the doctor did just feed the parent with the concept that the first thing he or she must do is to stress gender roles and point the boy towards one desired destination - he must land in the arms of a woman.  But she doesn't stop there. She continues with the advice to emphasize to the child “Remember you can have effeminate ways, but you never desire men.” Did she just say never?  As in ever?

To parents who may have different parenting styles, this is the pronouncement of Dr. Garcia:  “True gayness comes out at pubertal stage. (It is when the child desires or has a crush on the same sex.) What is wrong with some parents is encouraging the behavior.” 

Er, exactly what is wrong with encouraging gay behavior?  Isn't that a judgment that if child ends up gay because a parent encouraged it, it is a failure on the parent's part? The bigoted viewpoint is fully exposed when Ms. Babao asks the doctor If being gay is just a Iifestyle choice, or whether it is genetically determined.  The doctor sallies forth and has this drivel to offer:

“The genetic predisposition is there but if from the start it is corrected, maiaayos. (It can be fixed.)  Remember, genetic predisposition. Hindi minana, na at the start bakla siya. (Not inherited, that from the start he was gay”.)

The funniest reaction to this choice theory was a woman who dared the good doctor to choose to have a full on lesbian relationship just for 24 hours, with physical aspects and all, just to prove the inanity of it.  But really, that wasn't said in fun.  It was said in outrage, at the sheer effrontery of the doctor who was espousing the theory there was something wrong in the gay child that needed to be corrected.  For after all, the profession that Dr. Garcia said she belonged to had already made the conclusion, eons ago, that homosexuality is not a disease.  And yet here she was, urging parents to correct it.  To fix it.  To arrest the genetic predisposition.

In short order, the Psychological Association of the Philippines issued a statement, saying that 'the PAP recognizes that there is no inherent illness or pathology behind same-gender sexual orientations. In fact, it has been 40 years since homosexuality was taken out in the Diagnostic and Statistical Manual for Mental Disorders.'. It also labeled Dr. Garcia as misinformed, and directed readers to their website for a list of certified psychologists.

Ms. Babao likewise apologized after the backlash, and that should have been that, except she was reported to have tweeted after this that all of us only want what is best for our children.  Which means, if you think about it, that she thinks and espouses the view that gayhood isn't what is best for them.

There's lots of work to do in sensitizing Ms. Babao.  But the ginormous amount of online comments should be enough to guide her, if she only cared (or dared) to read them.  Dr. Liane Pena Alampay has a much more considered article on this same topic atInteraksyon.com, a column that was a direct response to Ms. Babao's piece.       It might be a good start for her.  And that misinformed source.