ANTITUSSIVE

My officemate who confesses to be a sex maniac (code name: Ponch) is at it again. He breaks into the first few notes of a popular song (Chicago's Song for You) in an indubitably alpha-male baritone. Want you to know…, he intones. Then in a dazzling coloratura, he sings the next line, "I'm a man!!!..."

On better days, it was Obie who would molest all the macho men and 'pogi' guys in the office, saying, "Pare, pa-kiss nga." Or, "Pare, maghubad na tayo, walang malisya."

Ponch is always funny and fun to be with, but I strongly doubt if he's truly happy. I strongly doubt whether he's not angry.

What would he make, for instance, of MTRCB's calling gays (like him) and lesbians "abnormal" on account of some gossip TV shows trumpeting the marriage of two girls barely out of their teens?

If you believe that everyone has a gay side, then you believe that gayness is a matter of choice. That choice may have been unconscious, or subconscious. Or it may have been totally conscious, half-hearted or resolute the conscious choice may have been. In either case, the term 'sex preference' is warranted because a decision has been made by the individual. (Possible rebuttal: Can a fetus decide that early? I don't know, but a fetus is known to react to such stimuli as maternal traumas.)

On the other hand, if you believe that gayness is a gene, it is inevitable you'd believe that gayness is not a matter of choice but of circumstance, nature instead of nurture. In this case, the term 'sex orientation' may be deemed more accurate. (Possible point of refutation: Has science provided the evidence yet for a gay gene?)

In whichever case - preference or orientation, I can second-guess that Ponch would most probably recoil at the term 'abnormal.' So your choice was 'abnormal'? But can an individual choice, a personal choice, be abnormal? So you're genes are anomalous; does that make you an abnormal person? Maybe yes, but the more crucial question is, does that make you less of a person? Are your private love interests in particular a shameful thing and not to be discussed in public, esp. on primetime TV?

Unavoidably, this leads us to examine the definition of the word 'abnormal.'

If 'abnormal' means a departure from the norm, whether above or below, then the use of the term by the MTRCB is justified. 'Abnormal' can be used in a clinical manner, without prejudgment or moral bias or any blinders. 'Abnormal' can merely mean 'atypical.' If the word is used by the MTRCB in this spirit, then there is no malice involved in its public utterance. Look, two men having sex will never produce a zygote, after all.

One concedes, however, that words are not just words; they are freighted with meaning, lots of it. And 'abnormal' is certainly one such highly nuanced word. It runs the gamut - from 'anomalous' to 'defective' to 'deviant' to 'freakish' and 'perverted.' And that's just for starters.

The MTRCB has not just made a terrible failure in diplomacy. It unduly placed gays and lesbians in an antagonistic position. It's a good thing it has retracted its harsh statement.

The key words in dealing with the gay community must be, at the minimum, tolerance, and, at the most, understanding and respect. Gays are already confused with who and what they are; government and society should not rub it in their face all the more, or it would be like pouring alcohol on a fresh wound.

***

If things are seen from the reverse, too, we must admit that trouble also brews when those at the margins foist themselves as the new norm. Gays should also accept that gayness will always be a minority because that's how things are: Most male and female zygotes - granting decisions are made at the zygote stage - choose to be hetero-. Male and female genes normally turn out to be what they are expected to be. Gays cannot just come out in the open and do things a majority of the population consider to be vulgar and scandalous and then expect to be respected and admired; they cannot just flout convention and expect to be loved back! What about gays' respect for the prevailing sensibility?

Yet even when homosexuality is a preference and not a heritable locus, i.e., essentially a choice, my thinking now is, society, the state, and religions, must ultimately respect that choice because it is a personal choice, and no crime is being committed against anyone outside that choice (unless religion sees that choice as a crime against oneself). Respect may not come in the form of legalizing gay marriages, but at least we can all improve upon how we view others who are 'differently abled.' Hopefully, that view will also be reflective of the vocabulary in contemporary usage. This is not a matter of being politically correct, it is a matter of respect for individual freedom and liberty. (I personally eschew political correctness for its tendency to erase the traditional dualities of the universe; PC is monistic, period.)

Lastly, since gayness and lesbianism remain attended by scientific mystery, the least we can do is avoid, if not stop, looking at homosexuality as a form of communicable disease, or worse, something inherently criminal, intrinsically immoral, or decidedly sinful.

Compassion for the differently-abled is something one learns not just from such contemporary works as Harry Potter, X-Men, and pink festival movies. It is as basic as being human and as essential as having a heart.

# posted by Resty Odon @ 3:49 PM 0 comments

(This reminds me so much of Versace's killer, Andrew Cunanan. This is originally from the Sydney Morning Herald, May 21, 2004.)

The house of lies surrounding a man who murdered his parents and sister has fallen down around him, writes Lee Glendinning.

There was a strangling darkness in the heart of Sef Gonzales. In poetry penned as a boy, he begged God to free him. "Just what is it in me? Sometimes I don't know," he implored. "Though you're in me now/I fail and hurt you still ... you have forgiven me/too many times it seems. Take me out of the dark Lord/'cause I don't want to be alone."

Written in a year 8 class, it is a glimpse into the mind of a then 14-year-old. To his teachers, the poem was a worthy example of writing, but to Gonzales it was part of a deception.

He had plagiarised it from a sacred Catholic song from the Philippines. It presaged another time, in July 2001, when he chose it as a hymn for the grieving congregation to sing over the caskets of his father, Teddy, mother, Mary Loiva, and sister, Clodine, after he had killed them.

During his murder trial, which ended with three guilty verdicts yesterday, 23-year-old Gonzales emerged as a paradox. Angelic, smooth, sweet, small, ambitious, a charming friend and an easily smitten lover. And at the same time fierce, physically strong, scheming, full of guile, jealous and ridden with sexual guilt. Central to his tragedy were the hidden tensions within his family.

Teddy Gonzales believed the name he gave his first child had never been bestowed on any other. Sef lamented at the funeral that his father had promised to reveal its true meaning once he turned 21. Now, he said, he would never know its origins.

It is possible the devout Catholic father took the name Sef from the book of Genesis, slightly altering the spelling of the third son of Adam and Eve, Seth. According to the Bible story it was Seth who continued the human race after his elder brother, Cain, murdered Abel.

But Sef owed his father so much more than his name. A prosperous childhood surrounded by extended family in Baguio City, 250 kilometres north of Manila, was shaken by a violent earthquake. The family-built hotel was demolished and Sef, trapped by his leg in the darkness, screamed: "Papa, Papa, Papa." Hearing the cries, Teddy ran back into the collapsing building, freed his son and pulled him to safety. Sef owed his father his life.

There were thunder claps in North Ryde the wintry night in July that Teddy Gonzales was driving home from work. The home phone went unanswered when he tried ringing. The family's dream home - decorated by his wife and complete with an altar at the top of the stairs where the family prayed to Our Lady Queen of Peace - sat opposite the home of the children's grandmother, Amelita Claridades.

Teddy arrived at 4.30pm. Sef stood in the wings of the doorway, wearing his father's shoes and a fresh tracksuit to hide the blood of his mother and sister. He had been waiting for 2 hours. The moment his father walked through the door, Sef stabbed him in the back, severing his spinal cord. He fell to the floor in partial paralysis, his white business shirt soaking with blood. Sef then stabbed his father's heart, again and again. He had slashed the throat of his mother, who had struggled, and bashed and strangled and stabbed his 18-year-old sister. The family's six dogs were either locked in the laundry or upstairs or chained up outside.

After the murders, Sef changed his clothes and continued with his plans. He sprayed the racist slur "F--- OFF ASIANS. KKK" on the living room wall. This, he hoped, would tip off visitors, entering in through a door he left open, something terrible had happened and throw police off his track. However, he left a trace of the paint on his jumper, crucially the only piece of evidence to definitely place him at the scene.

Just before 7pm, a neighbour, John Caulfield, heard a noise across the aluminium sheeting kept between the two houses. Police believe that it might have been Sef leaving the scene, taking away three bloodied tracksuits, two kitchen knives, his father's shoes and a pair of gardening gloves. They believe he cleaned himself up at a nearby primary school. The murder weapons are still missing.

As arranged, Sef arrived at 8pm at the house of a mate, Sam Dacillo, a few blocks away, ready to go out to dinner. It was during their drive to the city, before the bodies had been found, that he advanced his false alibi, telling Sam he had spent the afternoon driving around Blacktown looking for a friend's place.

But unknown to him, a client of his father's had dropped documents in the letterbox between 4.10pm and 4.30pm and saw a green Ford Festiva in the carport with the number plate SEF80G. His aunt, Emily Luna, also saw the car when she arrived after picking her son up from after-school care at 6pm. As she rang the doorbell he had stood to the side of the door.

Police believe he had never wanted to be the one to "discover" the bodies of his family. When he returned home at 11.45pm there was no movement and he knew he would have to begin the act.

He called triple-0 three minutes later, wailing "My family's been killed."

When ambulance officers arrived minutes after midnight Sef had told neighbours how he hugged the bodies and tried to resuscitate them and prevent the flow of gushing blood from Clodine's side. But there was barely any blood on him, save for the soles of his shoes and small spots on his pants. He says perhaps it washed off in the drizzling rain or when he sat down in shock, placing his hands on the frosty grass.

Sef has not talked about how he felt on that night. He has described finding the bodies but seems incapable of feeling. In court and at the funeral, despite his crumpling face, no tears came. During points of intense cross-examination, he could not articulate any feelings past panic.

When he sat up late in the night telling friends what he saw that evening, he spoke softly about each thing he saw, but never about how he felt.

This was the same young man who was able to stand in front of the coffins of his family, deliver a eulogy for his father and sing, eyes closed, with no accompaniment, the Mariah Carey/Boyz II Men duet One Sweet Day.

Sorry I never told you/All I wanted to say

Now it's too late to hold you/'cause you've flown away, so far away

Never had I imagined living without your smile ...

And I know you're shining down on me from Heaven/like so many friends we've lost along the way.

And I know eventually we'll be together/One Sweet Day.

A feeling of intense strangeness rippled through the church that day; it seemed to confirm what police knew. It jarred in the minds of friends. "He seemed sad, but so calm at the funeral," said one. "There were the three caskets in front of him holding the mutilated bodies of his family and he started to sing . . . it was really strange."

From as early as the night of the killings, when Sef gave his first statement to Gladesville police, relatives started distancing themselves from him but didn't question him until they had got through the funeral. Friends and relatives turned away after the funeral and as police approached each one, it became more apparent that Gonzales's conversations were complete fabrications. Some said they felt petrified of him; others later revealed they were afraid for their lives.

Emily Luna had an awful feeling. When she visited the house on the night of the murders she had seen a flash across the frosted glass which she thought was a coat stand. But after being shown by police where everything was placed, she realised the fleeting shadow had been a person.

In a secretly recorded conversation after the killings with his godfather and uncle, Edmund Claridades, Sef spoke of the weeks leading up to the deaths and, perhaps unknowingly, revealed a motive. Sef said: "Basically, my life went upside down. I feel I'm trapped and don't know what to do; feel like I'm getting deeper and deeper as if I could not stop this momentum."

His life was spiralling out of his control for two reasons that culminated in his family threatening to disown him and cut off his inheritance. The first was his abysmal university marks. His mother had also told him four days before the killings he would not be welcome in the family if he continued to see his girlfriend, of whom she disapproved. Clodine, too, had been threatened with such a thing after she began seeing a boy her mother did not approve of because he was not steadily employed. She was sent to Melbourne to complete her schooling.

On top of this he believed he deserved to claim his inheritance early and cut his sister, who was due to return to Melbourne the next day, out of the deal. Somehow he believed he was entitled to a privileged existence.

Sef was facing expulsion at his second attempt at a university degree, devastating to Teddy and Mary Loiva Gonzales, who would talk often about how they planned for him to become a heart surgeon and later about how he would take over the family law firm.

Whichever child had performed well at school would always be the centre of discussion at extended family functions. The other would be relegated. It was always a contest and thus a constant and desperate need for approval grew inside Sef from when he was young.

For Sef the pressure about his grades and his mother's disapproval of his girlfriends had become a game of avoidance and alibi.

In the months before the deaths he had provided a flurry of medical certificates to lecturers complaining of upper respiratory infections, attempting to sit supplementary exams to do anything to change the four fails he knew would be arriving in the mail on July 20 - the day his family was buried.

In the meantime, he began to attempt to create a fake academic transcript to show his parents and offered to do the same for Clodine, but she refused, revealing his forgery to their mother. His parents threatened to take away his privileges, his generous allowance and the use of his Ford Festiva. Before the murders they limited his car use so significantly that Sef had to take the bus to university, which he hated.

He had also broken up with a girl he adored, managing to woo her away from her boyfriend for two weeks before she went back, leaving Sef distraught. So strong were his feelings he had given her a promise of engagement: a necklace engraved with the letter G, and had introduced her to his mother. But, as she had often done before, his mother disapproved. This time it was because she said the woman, four years older than Gonzales, was too old. Four days before the murders, Gonzales argued with his mother, who said Gonzales would not be welcome in the family if the relationship continued.

ONCE they were dead, Sef became sole beneficiary of the will and was able to live the life he wanted, free from their control. Within 72 hours of his parents' murders, Sef met his father's accountant to find out how much money they had and whether anyone else had tried to get it. He embarked on a long legal battle to use his parents' $1.5 million estate to fund his legal defence, but was unsuccessful.

In the ensuing months he put deposits on a Porsche and Lexus SC430, quelling the disquiet of the car dealers' concerns about such a young man asking to test drive their best cars by saying he was expecting an inheritance from overseas. He also tried to pawn his mother's jewellery; he did sell her watch. And he moved into an 11th-floor apartment in Chatswood, furnishing it with the yellow lounge from his parents' house while he advertised their cars, selling them without his grandmother's permission.

In the 11 months between the killings and charges being laid, he was out clubbing. His main concerns were thoughts of an impending singing career, having been a singer in an a cappella band (Definite Vibez), and was free to indulge his vanity, collecting more than 15 bottles of aftershave. He also sent persistent emails to his aunt, Annie Paraan, in the Philippines, who managed the Sef family affairs there - asking for money. He even created false death certificates on a computer to speed up the process.

But his plan to kill had begun in a different way. In February 2001 Sef had begun searching for poisonous plants on the internet and ordering lethal seeds. Searches he thought he had deleted from his computer were later traced.

He told police he did this because he wanted to kill himself, so distraught was he over losing this girl he adored. He said he had told his friends that he had cancer as a way of preparing them for his death. Just weeks before the murders, Sef received the seeds, shelled them and mixed them with warm water. He kept the prepared potion in a film canister under his bedside table.

Realising then that if he was to poison his family, he would need some kind of explanation as to how it had happened, he typed a letter to a major food company: "Three of your products have been poisoned. By now they are on supermarket shelves. This is what you get for treating employees like garbage. Good luck finding infected cans before someone dies. Go to hell!!!"

The letter arrived on July 2, just over a week before the murders. He also wrote letters to the Federal Police and the Australian Quarantine and Inspection Service. Traces of the letters were found on his laptop and his fingerprint was lifted from one of the envelopes.

The next day, his mother reported violently ill at the Sydney Adventist Hospital, saying she believed she had food poisoning. Sef also feigned a minor stomach upset, telling people he believed there might have been something in the tap water at a restaurant in which the family had dined.

But his mother recovered and returned home. Realising he could no longer continue with the poisoning plan, he tried to cancel one of his orders for seeds on July 5. It seems likely he threw the remaining seeds into the backyard, because three years later a poisonous plant was found growing there.

After the killings, Sef appealed for help to find the killer and told anyone who would listen he wanted justice and was setting up a foundation in memory of his family.

In a police media conference he said: "It is difficult to explain the love and ties in my family . . . but if you were to picture the four corners of the world, in my world we were the four. The three corners of my world are now gone."

By December, detectives in Strike Force Tawas had told Sef that they didn't believe his story. Through a friend, they leaked the fact there were the two recorded sightings of his car on the murder afternoon, and he began to panic. He needed a new alibi.

He knew that his new story had to accommodate the two car sightings that afternoon and a reason why he had lied to police for so long. Not realising his phone was being tapped, Sef desperately called brothels. Did they have surveillance cameras? How long had they been opened? Did they keep copies of their rosters?

Choosing as his alibi witness a woman he had been with before who worked at a Chatswood brothel, Sef told police that he had been too ashamed to say it earlier. He said he was also embarrassed to admit to his extended family that he had been with a prostitute. They all believed Sef, a former altar boy and singer in a liturgical choir, was a good, Catholic virgin.

Walking with a friend in Hyde Park he revealed his new alibi, telling him he was worried it would "blow up in my face again".

When it turned out the woman he had chosen had taken that week off work, he had no choice but to stick to his plan, as he had already changed his story once. He paid a taxi driver $50 to write and sign a dictated statement saying he drove him to Chatswood that day, asking him to backdate it.

He also began fabricating emails which he handed to police. One said a wealthy Filipino businessman had been responsible for the deaths of his family and he should lie low and search through his father's business records.

Before all of this, police had no murder weapon and not enough evidence to charge him, but he was grasping, desperately trying to force people to give him statements and creating scenarios. All of it was taped.

The farrago of lies collapsed as police approached his friends. Not only was it a lie that he had cancer, but many of his other stories also proved to be hollow. He did not own a television production company, he was not training for the Olympics, he did not have a black belt in tae kwon do and was not attended by bodyguards. His story that he had been offered a record deal after his moving rendition of One Sweet Day at the funeral was also fabricated.

When he met the prostitute he would later try to use for his alibi, he told her he was a gang member. He bragged to a girlfriend later that the prostitute had said his sexual prowess was so incredible he didn't need to pay for her services.

He claimed he had flown to a funeral in New York after the collapse of the World Trade Centre and paid for the air fare of a victim's mother. Sef also bragged he was launching a "Sef-G street kids on stage" project and after the murders would call organisations such as the Starlight Foundation, telling them he was Sef Gonzales and expecting to be on their A-list for functions.

He created a website, pretending a friend had set it up in honour of their friendship, dedicating it to him. In truth, it was all Sef's work. Most of the messages on the site were fabricated.

Desperate for the approval that he had not received from his parents, he treated his friends generously. Some even felt motivated by how much he had supposedly achieved. "I always respected him for his dedication and motivation, so I thought keeping in touch with him will help me learn something and mature a bit more," said one. "He was a really good influence on me and always kind."

Another detailed how kind he had been to her. "He was very affectionate and had a way of making me feel special. We had good conversations and he was really fun to talk to and a good listener when something was wrong. He would get along with everyone we met."

While his claims were extremely outlandish they seemed genuine to all who heard them until they had reason to believe otherwise. "He seemed very genuine," said a friend who had known him for some years. "When I think of it now he fooled so many people and I remember the shock I felt when I found out about all the lies. He was a master of deception. That's why he was able to fool so many people. The things he said came out so genuinely it was hard to question them ... even when he was boasting he seemed modest."

One of the many stories about his father that he would repeat was this one: "My father would always say to me," Sef would begin. "There's no softer pillow when you sleep at night, as when you have a clear conscience."

# posted by Resty Odon @ 2:29 PM 0 comments

Dear Caius Marcius,

Your atheism may be explained away by the deep, yet-unrecognized, anger you harbor in your heart towards God. Only you can possibly diagnose the root of that anger. You may find it efficacious and salutary to your soul to answer the ff. freethinking question:

Why are you so angry at God, the God who created you and to whom you shall come home and make an accounting sooner or later?

I am not a Bible scholar but I will try my best to answer your atheistic denial of God's goodness. May you find my answers worthy enough to chew your cud over.

God loves you still (even if you don't like Him),

EXPECTORANTS

You have sent me this poem:

SCREAM
By James A. Haught

Did you ever hear a rabbit scream?
Bunnies make a heart-rending shriek
when pierced by fangs of a fox
or talons of a hawk.

Did you ever see a child dying of leukemia
trying to understand
trying to be brave
but doomed?

Did you ever see families killed by a twister
or an earthquake
or a monsoon flood
or a volcano?

Did you ever watch a fawn in the jaws of a lion
or a piglet coiled by a python
or a seal ripped by a shark?

Did you ever see the eyes of a woman when she's told
she has breast cancer?

All these horrors are nature at work
And nature, you say, was designed by an all-loving
all-merciful
all-benevolent
all-compassionate
all-kind
God.

EXPECTORANTS: The nature we know is largely fallen nature, the consequence of Adam's fall from grace. Thank God, Jesus makes and shall "make all things new." You are barking up the wrong tree, Caius. Why don't you ask the question to Satan and his host of rebels? Why don't you look into man and his follies and foibles?

______________________________

You quote the Rubaiyat:

“ Oh, threats of hell and hopes of paradise!
One thing at least is certain -- this life flies;
One thing is certain, and the rest is lies;
The flower that once has blown forever dies. ”

-- Omar Khayyam, born May 18, 1048, from the Rubaiyat

EXPECTORANTS: Beautiful! Just beautiful! Such a direct assault on the Christian hope of life eternal!

___________________________

You quote Jonathan Edwards' The Eternity of Hell's Torments:

"Reprobate infants are vipers of vengeance, which Jehovah will hold over hell in the tongs of his wrath until they turn and spit venom in his face."

Your reaction: Praise da Lawd! He loves all infants!

EXPECTORANTS: God never said He loves all infants. What He loves is innocence, sanctity and such. ___________________________

You said, "Please forward this to that Idiot Bernas (Jesuit priest and constitutionalist) and his cohorts of the Recladean disorder."

EXPECTORANTS: You have unduly honored me by including my name in this company of decent men:

To: caloys2k@..., offtherecord@abs.pinoycentral.com, "Rene Saguisag" , feedback@inquirer.com.ph, feedback@zigzagweekly.com, "Raul Rodrigo", "Bob Garon" , lito@..., "Ambeth Ocampo" , datuamir@columnist.com, deanjbocobo@..., eastwind@edsamail.com

______________ Your cohort J. L. also sends me this from your "Christian Hell Series":

"...little children who have begun to live in their mothers' womb and have there died, or who, having just been born, have passed away from the world without the sacrament of holy baptism ...must be punished by the eternal torture of undying fire."

St. Fulgentius - quoted in Hell, A Christian Doctrine

"PRAISE DA LAWD!"

EXPECTORANTS: I'm not sure about the innocent and the unevangelized (e.g. tribespeople who haven't heard of Christian salvation), but I think the point here, dear Casius, must be: we are nothing if we are not saved by God.

__________________________ Lately you (or one of you) gave me this:

"Why do so many people, even smart people, believe so many weird things? The problem is usually blamed on education, especially science education. That is only part of the problem. People believe weird things because they are taught what to think, not how to think."

EXPECTORANTS: Thank you for insulting me, for telling me that I don't have a mind of my own, that I don't have the capacity to think.

Your reply: You're very welcome!

EXPECTORANTS: FYI, I came from a thoroughly secular background. And my parents are long-time non-active Roman Catholics. Maybe I am capable of thinking for myself after all? Maybe you can give me that much at least?

_______________________________

And this:

Eating Dung And Drinking Piss

"But Rabshakeh said unto them, Hath my master sent me to thy master, and to thee, to speak these words? hath he not sent me to the men which sit on the wall, that they may eat their own dung, and drink their own piss with you?" (II Kings 18:27)

Your Comment

Whatever moral lesson an adult might gain from such questionable verses, one can only wonder. How many parents realize that their children, who might come across such filthy passages, could get the wrong message?

Any mention of eating feces and drinking urine in any secular writing would get considered obscene and sick by any righteous minded Christian. Then why should it not receive the same consideration if found in a bible? Might we ask what artistic or social value this verse presents?

Note the word "piss" stands as one of the censored vulgar words of the public television industry. If Christians wish to censor such language from secular sources, then it behooves them to give themselves as an example and thus censor the obscene verses from their own Bible.

(See also Isaiah 36:12)

EXPECTORANTS: Context, Casius, context. It is the enemy who is uttering those words. Check your Holy Bible, hehe.

_________________________

And this:

"Husbands shall see their wives, parents their children, tormented before their eyes; the bodies of the damned shall be crowded together in hell, like grapes in a wine press, which press one another till they burst; every distinct sense and organ shall be assailed with its appropriate and most exquisite sufferings."

- Bishop Jeremy Taylor

Praise da Lawd! He loves you very much.

EXPECTORANTS: The point must be: God's goodness is such that no amount of sin can ever endure His holiness even for one nanosecond.

_____________________________ This, too:

"...little children who have begun to live in their mothers' womb and have there died, or who, having just been born, have passed away from the world without the sacrament of holy baptism ...must be punished by the eternal torture of undying fire."

St. Fulgentius - quoted in Hell, A Christian Doctrine

EXPECTORANTS: As far as I know, or believe in, there is such a thing called purgatory where souls are given a chance to purify themselves. And just like in Dante Alighieri's vision, hell is said to comprise of parts or stages, depending on one's magnitude of iniquity. You ought not to believe that, of course, but anyone can be sure of God's fairness and justice for He's the only one who sees through every heart.

________________________

And this:

Boil and Eat Your Son

"And the king said unto her, What aileth thee? And she answered, This woman said unto me, Give thy son, that we may eat him to day, and we will eat my son to morrow. So we boiled my son, and did eat him: and I said unto her on the next day, Give thy son, that we may eat him: and she hath hid her son...." (II Kings 6:28-29)

Your Comment

According to the Bible, a horrible famine took place in Samaria where in desperation, the people ate whatever they could. The cannibalistic eating of a son may provide sufficient nutrition for a mother but disregards the puissant nature of humans to protect their young. Although the Bible does not explain if the son had already died or if the parent deliberately killed him for food, this dreadful example goes against human nature.

Long before bibles or written language, humans evolved as social animals that required the protection of their offspring. Only the dogmatic insistence of a belief-system could supersede the natural instincts of humans. Hopefully readers of the Bible who might one day experience a famine will not subvert their natural instinct for this kind of horrific example in Scripture. May I suggest that if you cannot control your belief to eat your children, sacrifice your priest and eat him instead; that way you gain far more protein for you and your children, and when you say grace, you'll have someone to really thank for your food.

EXPECTORANTS: That line is certainly not a statement in support of a dogma. It is just a part of a story on extreme famine.

___________________________

And this:

Nothing should be denied to the blessed which belong to the perfection of their beatitude. Now all things are for the better known for being compared with their contrary. Consequently, in order that the happiness of the saints may be more delightful and that they may give to God more copious thanks for it, they are permitted perfectly to behold the suffering of the damned and the saints will rejoice in the punishment of the damned."

St. Thomas Aquinas

Praise da Lawd!

EXPECTORANTS: I guess that's how it is, Mr. Marcius. Harsh, straightforward truth. Nothing sugar-coated. Christianity, Roman Catholicism in particular, is never an easy religion. And yet you wonder why it endures through time and in every culture and clime.

________________________ And this:

The Presidential Prayer Team of President Bush is currently urging us to:

"Pray for the President as he seeks wisdom on how to legally codify the definition of marriage. Pray that it will be according to Biblical principles. With many forces insisting on variant definitions of marriage, pray that God's Word and His standards will be honored by our government."

Any good religious person believes prayer should be balanced by action. So here, in support of the Prayer Team's admirable goals, is a proposed Constitutional Amendment codifying marriage entirely on biblical principles:

A. Marriage in the United States shall consist of a union between one man and one or more women.(Gen 29:17-28; II Sam 3:2-5.)

B. Marriage shall not impede a man's right to take concubines in addition to his wife or wives. (II Sam 5:13; I Kings 11:3; II Chron 11:21)

C. A marriage shall be considered valid only if the wife is a virgin. If the wife is not a virgin, she shall be executed (Deut 22:13-21)

D. Marriage of a believer and a non-believer shall be forbidden. (Gen 24:3; Num 25:1-9; Ezra 9:12; Neh 10:30)

E. Since marriage is for life, neither this Constitution nor the constitution of any State, nor any state or federal law, shall be construed to permit divorce. (Deut 22:19; Mark 10:9)

F. If a married man dies without children, his brother shall marry the widow. If he refuses to marry his brother's widow or deliberately does not give her children, he shall pay a fine of one shoe and be otherwise punished in a manner to be determined by law. (Gen. 38:6-10; Deut 25:5-10)

G. In lieu of marriage, a female (and her sisters, if any) may get her father drunk and have sex with him. (?)

EXPECTORANTS: The above are from the Old Testament. You read the OT in the context of the whole Bible, i.e., taking into account the New Testament. Context. Always read the text in context.

____________________________________

From your Sex, Obscenities, & Filth in the Bible series:

Expose Her Breasts!

"Behold, I am against thee, saith the LORD of hosts; and I will discover thy skirts upon thy face, and I will shew the nations thy nakedness, and the kingdoms thy shame. And I will cast abominable filth upon thee, and make thee vile, and will set thee as gazingstock." (Nahum 3:5-6)

"Look, I am against you!- declares Yahweh Saboath- I shall lift your skirts as high as your face and show your nakedness to the nations, your shame to the kingdoms. I shall pelt you with filth." (Nahum 3:6, The New Jerusalem Bible)

Your Comment

Some think these verses describe a genius of a poet. If judged as such, it can only come from its sharpness and vividness. But it also describes vulgarity and hatred, even if it aims against the harlotry of the city of Nineveh.

Few scholars today believe that these verses come as a direct quote from God. But a fundamentalist who believes every word of the Bible, must also accept these words as Godly. If so, then how can one not see God in a cruel vulgar light?

"Filth" here refers to dung. (See also Malachi 2:2-3 where God says "I will corrupt your seed, and spread dung upon your faces...")

EXPECTORANTS: It is the fundamentalist's problem if he takes every word of the Bible literally. Kindly send him this: Biblical interpretation: Context.

________________________________ Then you quote me this:

"Hell was made by God for the inquisitive!" St. Augustine - Confessions

EXPECTORANTS: Are you saying that there is no hell? Well, don't worry, you have Padre Pio's (the stigmatist) assurance: "You will believe in hell when you get there."

_______________________________ This:

"The Church says that the earth is flat, but I know that it is round, for I have seen its shadow on the moon. I have more faith in a shadow than in all the dogmas and pronouncements of the Church."

Ferdinand Magellan (before he set off to attempt to circumnavigate the earth.)

EXPECTORANTS: Please locate Magellan's soul on the map. I wouldn't be surprised if you find him eating his words.

__________________________________

In J. L.'s series, 'Sex, Obscenities, & Filth in the Bible', he quotes:

God's Bowel Diseases

"Behold with a great plague will the LORD smite thy people and thy children, and thy wives, and all thy goods: And thou shalt have great sickness by disease of thy bowels, until thy bowels fall out by reason of the sickness day by day." (II Chronicles 21:14-15)

"And after all this the LORD smote him in his bowels with an incurable disease. And it came to pass, that in process of time, after the end of two years, his bowels fell out by reason of sickness: so he died of sore diseases. And his people made no burning for him, like the burning of his fathers." (II Chronicles 12:18-19)

L.'s Comment

"Another among many instances in the Bible where the Lord smites, not only men, but all the people including women and children."

"Why God would concern himself with giving an incurable cruel bowel disease where the person's guts spill out of the abdomen, goes beyond human decency and comprehension."

EXPECTORANTS: God is good and gentle, but He is also powerful and just. He is capable of profound wrath. Who are we to tell him not to get angry? not to exact vengeance, punish, destroy, kill, etc.?

__________________________

L. sends this day's inspirational:

God's Fecal Fetish

"If ye will not hear, and if ye will not lay it to heart, to give glory unto my name, saith the LORD of hosts, I will even send a curse upon you, and I will curse your blessings: yea, I have cursed them already, because ye do not lay it to heart. Behold, I will corrupt your seed, and spread dung upon your faces, even the dung of your solemn feasts; and one shall take you away with it." (Malachi 2:2-3)

L.'s Comment

"Amazingly God appears to have a fecal fetish."

"This commandment to the priests told by the Lord gives example of the Satanic threats or curses He seems to enjoy. What should one think of a God that would smear feces upon the faces of his creations? Such vulgarity can hardly give good example to high morality."

EXPECTORANTS: This must be a colorful way of cursing, but what's wrong with God cursing? Doesn't God, the creator and owner of the universe and everything in it, have the right to free speech?

_________________________

Certainly I see the scientific view of the world as incompatible with religion, but that is not what is interesting about it. It is also incompatible with magic, but that also is not worth stressing. What is interesting about the scientific world view is that it is true, inspiring, remarkable and that it unites a whole lot of phenomena under a single heading.

Richard Dawkins

EXPECTORANTS: We turn to religion precisely because science has failed us. It cannot even answer the fundamental questions we have about life. And even on a purely scientific level, science still has a lot of things to answer. (P.S. I have B.S. Bio diploma which I have yet to get hold of; I hope it isn't being eaten by moths and mildew at the UP Diliman Registrar.) ___________________________

"An ever-burning Gehenna will burn up the condemned, and a punishment devouring with living flames ... Souls with their bodies will be reserved in infinite tortures of suffering."

St. Cyprian

EXPECTORANTS: Hell is the poetry of divine justice. There is hell because there is heaven, and vice-versa. Hell is the price of Lucifer's rebellion and the negative price of man's freedom of choice. Hell, hell, hell. You can deny its existence all you want, but as in Pascal's wager, what if indeed there is hell? Oh, that would be too high a price to pay for our choice of denial!

____________________________

I respect your belief and decision, Mr. Marcius. But let it not be said no one told you that God shall be pained to lose you or anyone else. After all, you, too, are His beloved child. I've read somewhere that you don't go to hell because of God's wrath, you go to hell because you choose it. Repent while there is still time.

Since you are fond of quotes, let EXPECTORANTS leave you this food for thought.

"A dog is free to be a dog; a sinner is free to be a sinner." Andrew Anderson

# posted by Resty Odon @ 12:59 PM 0 comments

When I was little, I wanted what many Filipino children all over the country wanted. I wanted to be blond, blue-eyed, and white.

I thought -- if I just wished hard enough and was good enough, I'd wake up on Christmas morning with snow outside my window and freckles across my nose!

More than four centuries under western domination does that to you. I have sixteen cousins. In a couple of years, there will just be five of us left in the Philippines, the rest will have gone abroad in search of "greener pastures." It's not just an anomaly; it's a trend; the Filipino diaspora. Today, about eight million Filipinos are scattered around the world.

There are those who disapprove of Filipinos who choose to leave. I used to. Maybe this is a natural reaction of someone who was left behind, smiling for family pictures that get emptier with each succeeding year. Desertion, I called it. My country is a land that has perpetually fought for the freedom to be itself. Our heroes offered their lives in the struggle against the Spanish, the Japanese, the Americans. To pack up and deny that identity is tantamount to spitting on that sacrifice.

Or is it? I don't think so, not anymore. True, there is no denying this phenomenon, aided by the fact that what was once the other side of the world is now a twelve-hour plane ride away. But this is a borderless world, where no individual can claim to be purely from where he is now. My mother is of Chinese descent, my father is a quarter Spanish, and I call myself a pure Filipino-a hybrid of sorts resulting from a combination of cultures.

Each square mile anywhere in the world is made up of people of different ethnicities, with national identities and individual personalities. Because of this, each square mile is already a microcosm of the world. In as much as this blessed spot that is England is the world, so is my neighbourhood back home.

Seen this way, the Filipino Diaspora, or any sort of dispersal of populations, is not as ominous as so many claim. It must be understood. I come from a Third World country, one that is still trying mightily to get back on its feet after many years of dictatorship. But we shall make it, given more time. Especially now, when we have thousands of eager young minds who graduate from college every year. They have skills. They need jobs. We cannot absorb them all.

A borderless world presents a bigger opportunity, yet one that is not so much abandonment but an extension of identity. Even as we take, we give back. We are the 40,000 skilled nurses who support the UK's National Health Service. We are the quarter-of-a-million seafarers manning most of the world's commercial ships. We are your software engineers in Ireland, your construction workers in the Middle East, your doctors and caregivers in North America, and, your musical artists in London's West End.

Nationalism isn't bound by time or place. People from other nations migrate to create new nations, yet still remain essentially who they are. British society is itself an example of a multi-cultural nation, a melting pot of races, religions, arts and cultures. We are, indeed, in a borderless world!

Leaving sometimes isn't a matter of choice. It's coming back that is. The Hobbits of the shire travelled all over Middle-Earth, but they chose to come home, richer in every sense of the word. We call people like these balikbayans or the 'returnees' -- those who followed their dream, yet choose to return and share their mature talents and good fortune.

In a few years, I may take advantage of whatever opportunities come my way. But I will come home. A borderless world doesn't preclude the idea of a home. I'm a Filipino, and I'll always be one. It isn't about just geography; it isn't about boundaries. It's about giving back to the country that shaped me.

And that's going to be more important to me than seeing snow outside my windows on a bright Christmas morning.

Mabuhay and Thank you.

# posted by Resty Odon @ 4:36 PM 0 comments

Alleluia to the ANTITUSSIVE! Ahem, I mean, amen, amen. This new blog shall make all things new. H-a-r-r-u-m-p-h!!!

# posted by Resty Odon @ 4:41 PM 0 comments