The latest article was timely for bringing to attention the groundswell rising in the United States for the passing of laws that should penalize hate crimes against gays and racial minorities. Gays and other minorities the world over may owe to the unnecessary torture and death of gay youth Matthew Shepard the increased awareness of the need to prevent bigots from fomenting violence against persons they happen to dislike.

Right here in the Philippines, it might interest readers to know that gays, especially those who are not likely to be formally employed because of perceived inappropriateness to most corporate environments, suffer in silence a double burden. The first is based on economics. Gay men who cannot help but be effeminate are usually sidelined to the informal labor sector and thus receive irregular incomes as hairdressers, contractual support workers in the entertainment industry and self-employed microentrepreneurs.

Gays who identify as masculine and mostly in the closet constantly fear having their sexuality disclosed, which can result in demotion, removal, transfer to a less influential area or inevitably become the center of office gossip.

The other burden is being constantly blamed for attracting abuse. It is common for macho bullies to hurt gays who happen to walk past them with catcalls and often with a kick in the butt. Gag shows on TV and radio portray screaming faggots as punching bags and wicked witches. Parents beat up their gay school-age children with a view to reorient the child.

Three days ago, a tabloid reported a crime in which four assailants abducted, killed and burned a man inside his own car. How the paper knew the burnt body as that of a gay person was not described. If he was, will that explain why the criminals had to be that cruel when they were merely after his jewelry and money?

These are not isolated and unrelated incidents. They are part of the environment of hate and fear that moralists think they are duty-bound to foster based on the twisted logic that making gay people straight or eliminating us will save the nuclear family. Violent acts cannot be removed from the repeated invoking by the dreadful Religious Right of "hate the sin, love the sinner" cliches.

The filing by Senate President Fernan of bills seeking to make sure two people who will be married have to prove their biological sex is part of this trend towards making life hell not only for gays and transgenders but also for straights, as well as taxpayers who do not intend to get married.

While international sports experts are succeeding in lobbying the International Olympics Committee to abolish the demeaning gender testing, as it is exclusively done on women, Fernan's proposal, if carried to its absurd basic assumptions, will add on an unnecessary and costly medical testing and certification system, a technological scandal given that the government is destroying public health care intended for resurgent disease like tuberculosis; privatizing state hospitals, clinics and laboratories; and removing social support even from the most essential drugs.

Easily twenty million marrying-age women, already burdened by poor health, inadequate nutrition and low wages, will have to pay through the nose just to assure the government that they are chromosomally identified as females, or is this to be shouldered by - who else - all taxpayers? Either way, it's money better spent on food.

Of course, the victims to be worst hit are the gay and transgendered people. While most queers would want a flexible form of social recognition as co-equal in many formal and informal institutions and instruments, Fernan's misplaced legislative priorities would push for a mandatory biological labelling of everybody, a throwback to the Nazi obsession of sorting out the Aryan race from "impurities" such as Jews, Slavs, gays and gypsies.

Though Fernan will refuse to acknowledge this, the mere law, even if it fails to establish the foolishly costly technical infrastructure it will need, can deepen the tendency of the homophobic elements to more easily target people they perceive should be robbed and chased with knives and fists.

The proposed law can mark out being gay or transgender as a rigid lifetime genetic tag encoded in a magnetic strip or microchip lurking inside the National Identification System that the Estrada regime is trying to raise from the dead. What next? DNA testing to screen gay fetuses and allow parents to consider these for legal abortions?

If we want to respect the memory of Matthew Shepard whose death made us more committed to work against hate, all queers and our straight friends have to realize that the first bills with the highest potential to provoke hate crimes are already here and filed by Sen. Fernan. Let us write or call his office and tell him that we want to junk Senate Bills 894, 897 and 898.###