I'm a Second-Class Citizen in My Own Country

(SPOT.ph) There is something sad about being gay in the Philippines. 

I was already in my 30s when my dad asked me: "You and your partner, what are your plans about buying a house?”  

I came out in my 20s. It wasn't a very good coming out. It led me to leave my parents' house and I didn't speak to any family members for years. When we eventually began speaking again, it felt like the acceptance of who and what I was still needed a little more time.  

This is why my dad asking about my plans to buy a house with my partner marks a significant moment for me. A house, after all, was a long-term investment. It was the first time that she was acknowledged as someone who wasn't temporary. Before this, my parents and I never really talked about my having a partner. It seemed like something awkward they didn’t want or knew how to talk about, and I wondered if they expected it to just pass, that someday I’ll still end up getting married and having kids. 

Now that I’m older, I can understand it can be difficult for parents to see their child living a life different from what they expected. A part of me still regrets not giving my father the chance to give me away. Celebrations help us mark important life events and let us share emotional moments in our lives. In the case of weddings, they also help with the letting go. My family was not afforded a grand event that marks my leaving the household to form another. It was not a moment of celebration. For a long time, my parents hoped I would return. It took a while for them to realize that that was no longer going to happen. 

Another time, my dad asked: “How would inheritance work for you?” I told him what I knew: that the system sees us as single, unrelated people. Unless we do something about it, whatever we own individually will go to our blood relatives—our parents, our siblings, and anyone else along that line. 

My parents aren't greedy people. I knew my dad didn’t ask that question because he was interested in what I owned. A lot can happen in life, and the law—supposedly—should provide us with safeguards. But in a country that doesn’t recognize same-sex unions, the protection afforded to married couples is not given to us. I know it’s always at the back of my parents’ minds that I am not married in the legal sense. I am building a life with somebody who is, in the eyes of the law, completely separate from me.

The LGBTQIA+ lose on a lot of things just by being what they are. Whenever I look for companies to work for, I look for ones that recognize same-sex partners. This means letting us declare same-sex partners as our dependents for important things like health care and life insurance, which otherwise would have been either expensive or impossible to get on our own. I look at companies that already have policies that are non-discriminatory. When you live in a country where the laws don’t recognize your relationship with your partner, you have to actively find the pockets of space where you are recognized and seen, and you actively have to do more while working with fewer options than everyone else just to make sure you can live the kind of life other people might take for granted. 

The years during the height of COVID-19 were eye-opening. Maybe for the first time for many of us, we wondered about what it would be like to see ourselves at the end of life. Stuck at home, my partner and I talked about what we should do to protect ourselves if our health were to ever take a turn for the worst. We do not ever want to find ourselves separated because only "immediate family" was allowed to be with us. We wanted to be the ones to make end-of-life decisions for one another because we are partners in life. Our most difficult and personal conversations had been with one another, we shared the best and the worst of life and of ourselves with one another. We knew each other best, so it only made sense that we would be the best people to know where the other would stand on difficult life decisions.  

We talked about what we needed to do. We could have special powers of attorney on hand to authorize each other to make medical decisions for each other when the need arises. But then we asked: would it work? What are the limitations of these things? What about when it comes to properties? We both worked hard to have the life we have, for the things we built together to not be taken away because of technicalities. We had very lucid conversations about morbid life events because we knew the law was not going to naturally be on our side. 

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I once asked my mom what convinced her to stop hoping I would get married to a man and have my own children. We had a lot of conversations through the years when she used to ask things like, “What will happen to you when you're older? Who is going to take care of you?” 

In the end, she said that it was when I said I would rather spend 50 years being happy with a woman I loved—with the hardships and the tears and the politics of it all—than to spend 50 years being miserable with a man in the off-chance that my child with him would be willing to take care of me in the one year at the end of my life when I would require it. Only one of these things would have been the honest and genuine way to live. 

The problem with being gay is that it takes something beautiful and personal and makes it a political and public issue. It would be nice to just be able to bask in love, to celebrate finding that one person that somehow makes everything good and right. But there is nothing like your first taste of discrimination, the first barrier you encounter that makes you realize the rules don’t apply to you the same way they do to everyone else.  

I’ve been asked before why I would choose to love a woman. As many members of the community will tell you, it's not really a choice. Why would anyone choose this? To live as an LGBTQIA+ is like living as though life is set at a higher difficulty than everyone else’s. I did not even talk about all the outright harassment members of the community endure, how there are still people around the world who are actively against us, and the above-average rates of depression and even suicide that the community continues to struggle with.  

We have this funny thing we say in Filipino: “Bawal ang tanga.” For the LGBTQIA+, this certainly applies. You have to be smart and you have to be aware. You have to protect yourself, take care of yourself. We are not yet at the point where things are fair. Life is still set on hard mode. 

An old boss from Canada once asked me: “Why don’t you leave? You are both working, and same-sex marriage is already recognized in a lot of countries. Surely many of them will be kind to you given how things are in your country.”  

I do see a lot of us are leaving. That, too, is incredibly sad. I do not want to leave. My country is right here; I have so much I can give to it. We often hear immigrants say it's difficult to be a second-class citizen in another country, but sometimes one can't help but feel that being LGBTQIA+ in the Philippines is like being a second-class citizen in your very own country.

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I'm "Single" and Married
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