Why Celebrity Coming Outs are a Welcome Distraction

More Pinoy showbiz and non-showbiz celebrities are likely to reveal their being part of the LGBT community these days. Also some showbiz followers have begun wishing the outwardly male ones who have been keeping a secret their sexuality will follow suit.

The Pride Month of June has extended itself! We will dare proclaim it here and now: celebrities coming out about their true gender is a better development than finding out how pervasive and punishing corruption has become in the country among some ranks of the conscienceless wealthy and well-positioned in the government. Well-positioned to steal! 

Surely no province, town, or city will suddenly get flooded just because actress Angel Aquino has declared from out of the blue that she likes girls — she who has had (male) lovers much younger than she is by at least five years.

No Filipino family will sink deeper into poverty and poor health just because the single mom Janella Salvador has posted on social media her photos being kissed by fellow actress Jasmine Curtis-Smith, prompting very close friend actress-singer Kleia Pineda to put out her photo kissing Salvador in tight embrace. Please, let us now all stop asking Salvador and Pineda if they are lovers. Or we would never hear the end to “What you see is what you get!” Silly questions get silly answers all the time. 

We wish politicians, government and military officials who have been passing themselves as full males will soon do an Angel Aquino and gaily blurt out “I like boys.” Most likely, they would not be in the long list of the perpetrators of “floodgate” and other fund-stealing government infrastructure projects. Being queer is no crime. Pocketing people’s taxes have always been one, caught or uncaught. 

There is a male legislator in the “floodgate” list accused by a showbiz gay personality of stealing his ex-actor boyfriend. The legislator is a well-known actor, too. But only one entertainment website posted the accusation and the legislator ignored the accusation but mightily denied having received cash from the infamous couple. So, no self-respecting news media pursued the story, though the gay showbiz personality (who has long been living in the US) went on his merry way of bashing in his social media the legislator-actor (he is mostly an ex-actor now, actually). 

Award-winning actress Elizabeth Oropesa just about a month ago admitted in a soc-med post that she used to court some women at the time she was rumored to be pursued by new actress and ex-Miss International Melanie Marquez. Both Oropesa and Marquez are more prominently known for having children with different fathers. Marquez has a son with then- full time time action star Lito Lapid. It was Marquez’s first child. 

We were at the school where Angel Aquino graduated in Journalism in the early ‘90s when we chanced upon in our mobile phones the report about her liking girls: the University of the Philippines in Baguio City. We were there for the formal opening of the Museum and Galleries Month of the National Commission on Culture and the Arts (NCCA) at the Museo Cordillera, which is actually part of UP Baguio. 

Aquino’s acting career started in the “Pines City” as one of the two leading ladies of Raymart Santiago in Viva Films’ Mumbaki in 1996. By that time, Aquino was already married to Ian Bernardez who must have been a schoolmate at UP. Aquino recently recalled that she already had a daughter in 1996, now actress-producer Iana Bernardez, who was born two years before her parents married. 

Aquino is not a native of Baguio but of Surigao del Sur, though she grew up in Marikina in Metro Manila. She went to college in Baguio most likely because it was in that campus that she qualified based on her high school grades and entrance exam results. The Museo Cordillera was put up in 2017 so Aquino was not around yet when Aquino was in college at UP. 

Museo Cordillera is classified as an “ethnographic museum.” Online sources say that an ethnographic museum collects, preserves and displays cultural artifacts and records, such as tools, art, clothing and photographs, to document and share the customs, beliefs and social realities of diverse cultures and peoples worldwide. These institutions aim to foster cultural understanding, promote tolerance and serve as sites for education by providing rich, layered descriptions of various communities and their heritage. 

There are other public and private museums in Baguio City, the oldest of which is Baguio Museum which was established in 1977; the BenCab Museum put up by National Artist for Visual Arts Ben Cabrera; Bell Museum in Camp John Hay, and the Emilio Aguinaldo Museum. Baguio City is culturally rich and it remains scenic despite being congested with houses and buildings constructed in cliffs and ravines. But the City’s being culturally diverse (including religions and forms of worship) and historically significant make it ideal to launch the NCCA Museums and Galleries Month, which is celebrated all over the country. 

Meanwhile, Angel’s daughter Iana is ahead in telling the public that she is bisexual. She announced it in 2019. She has also top-billed a Girls Love film with beauty queen-actress Aya Fernandez.