BOOK REVIEW: Bright, Catholic, and Gay by Danton Remoto

Switch channels and change your tabloids—we are already tired of cold headlines and passive-aggressive remarks of public personalities. Media has been a way for different perspectives, including the miscued and over-the-top.

Luckily, we have something that oozes with brilliance and fresh ideas. A book with 21 essays, Bright, Catholic and Gay by Danton Remoto offers us witty, disturbing, and even provoking issues that keeps you intrigued until the last page.

Being known as a founder of Ladlad Partylist, the book focuses on LGBT about everything—political stands, successes, closet lives, and social “scarlet letters”. After reading this, conservative Filipinos will get the somehow full picture of LGBT life. What’s so unique about Remoto is his (or her, there’s no politically correct pronoun yet) narrative of how ordinary gayness is. Their love of God. Partners with risks of HIV.  Finding love. The harsh and unmoderated comments on the internet. Coming out and liberation. Everything.

Back cover

Aside from that, there are queer literature and erotic fiction featured, reviewed by Remoto himself. As if a beginner’s book, it propels the readers to dig deep into the life of pink warriors. Easy-read yet sensitive, it excites you have a leap of faith delving to the almost outcasts.

Personally, I don’t have a lot of gay/lesbian friends because I barely have friends at all (haha). My circle of networks are small and neat. However, the “pink community” amuses me a lot, and the book has become a way to understand them better. They have an equally colorful lives, maybe more. Fighting against the common stereotypes, they bravely shed denial, shame, guilt, and self-loathing. As a feminist (yes, you read it right), we are in the same page on sickening gender biases and our supposed “place” in the society.

(The Breakfast Club, 1985)

Gathering his stories from all walks of life, Bright, Catholic—and Gay is a fresh look on LGBT life… from shadows, out into the light.