Thursday, May 08, 2008 Dakay backs ‘gay ban’ during Santacruzan
EVEN if no reports have reached the Archbishop’s Palace yet on gays participating in local Santacruzan celebrations, Archdiocesan media liaison officer Msgr. Achilles Dakay said it is about time that gays should refrain from dressing as women in the annual May celebration.
For the church official, gays are still welcome to participate in the event that commemorates the search for the Holy Cross by St. Helena, mother of Roman Emperor Constantine.
“The Santacruzan is a devotion to the Virgin Mary. Anyone’s participation in it must have religious content. For me, I suggest that gays should not dress as women but as escorts in proper attires for the young Constantine,” he said in a phone interview yesterday.
“The event will lose its religious significance when gays dressed as women are among the participants,” he added.
Dakay was commenting on the statement issued by Manila Archbishop Gaudencio Cardinal Rosales who is forbidding the “gay version” of the Santacruzan.
According to GMANew.TV, Rosales said allowing gays to be part of in the countrywide celebration “defeats the real purpose of the religious procession.”
The devotion to the Virgin Mary is destroyed, he said, by having gays instead of women in it and it eventually becomes a “laughing matter.”
Rosales, though, stressed he is not anti-gay and is only keeping the “sacredness” of Santacruzan.
Dakay said the Archdiocese of Cebu has not received reports of similar incidents in its jurisdiction.
He did not say what processes they will undertake if it happens and said that they will handle the reports as they come. (NRC)
