BY Danton Remoto Lodestar Art and Culture section The Philippine STAR June 14, 2010 Raymond “Bong” Alikpala seemed like the perfect guy any girl would love to bring home to mother. He is a blue-blooded Atenean from grade school to law school, an honor student and student council leader. He is also a practicing Catholic; cheerful, bright, and personable. But for many years he hid a secret in the innermost chamber of himself — his homosexuality. After almost four decades in the closet, he has finally come out and written what may be a most controversial book, God Loves Bakla: My Life in the Closet. Published by the author himself in Cambodia where he now works as a lawyer, the book’s Philippine edition was launched by Ang Ladlad Party List a fortnight ago. In reportorial mode, Alikpala begins his narrative this way. “I am a gay man, a homosexual. I engage in sexual relations with the same sex. I have paid other men to have sex with me. I have never had sex with a woman. I have a husband....

Ang Ladlad will sponsor the launching of the Philippine edition of God Loves the Bakla this Sunday, 6-8 pm, at Cafe Adarna, Kalayaan Avenue near Matalino Street, Quezon City. Come one, come all! The most controversial book of the year! Filipino writer sees book as his anti-closet Thursday, 13 May 2010 15:00 Douglas Long The Phom Penh Post Cambodia IN March 2000 Pope John Paul II publicly asked God’s forgiveness for the sins of Roman Catholics through the ages. Among the crimes against humanity alluded to by the pope were the Crusades, the Inquisition, and the church’s silence in the midst of the deportation of Jews from Rome by the Nazis. Also on the laundry list of those victimised by the Catholic Church were ethnic groups, which John Paul II admitted had endured “contempt for their cultures and religious traditions”, and women, who were “all too often humiliated and marginalised”. There was one notable word, however, that did not pass the pope’s lips in the course of his apology: hom...