1. Threesome: Carlos Yulo, his mom, his girl friend.
Must the public discuss Olympian’s personal affairs?
ECLIPSING the national euphoria over Carlos Yulo’s twin gold medal victories in the Paris Olympics is the public debate over his quarrel with his mother Angelica Poquiz-Yulo. The son, 24, had griped about how his mom handled his finances. The mom had disapproved his choice of girlfriend, a Tiktok content creator.
The issue has played out in news stories, interviews and posts in social media -- even with a press-con, featuring a top-caliber lawyers helping the mom navigate media waters, and published private notes between mother and son. Some people pleaded to leave the Filipino Olympian, the only second Filipino to win a gold medal after weightlifter Hidilyn Diaz in the Tokyo Olympics.
The feud is a private matter, all right, but Yulo is public property, no less open to public scrutiny, it has turned out, than a movie star or an elective politician.
2. When one spouse is ‘in heat’ and the other refuses.
Must a senator publicly push for man’s ‘right’ to satisfy lust?
SEN. Robin Padila later apologized to those offended by his statements in the Senate hearing on marital rape, by the committee on public information and mass media, in which he pressed for how the husband must satisfy his sexual urge if the wife would refuse. He didn’t say, he said, it was “okay” for husbands for force wives to have sex. But he must know how husbands could tame themselves when they’re horny.
He grew up under the Bible, explaining why it is a sexual right. Padilla told the hearing, “Women are dominated by men.” Wasn’t he saying in effect that husbands can force themselves on spouses?
Christians and Muslims are taught, he said, that each spouse has the right to enjoy a “healthy sexual relationship.” He cited “scholars,” without naming one, who say that it is obligatory on women “not to refuse their husbands unless there’s a satisfactory excuse.” Otherwise, she is “cursed,” Padilla said.
And why the public discussion? “In aid of legislation.”
‘No means no,’ woman lawyer Kapunan schools actor-senator Robin
HUMAN rights advocate Atty. Lorna Kapunan said rape can be applied even between spouses, each of whom can validly refuse.
The “obligation of obedience” between spouses has already been amended. Sex without consent is rape, Atty. Kapunan lectured the senator.
Rape may be committed by the husband against his wife. Law penalizes the crime without regard to rapist’s legal relationship with his victim. And only the ‘man’ can commit rape?
THE Supreme Court ruled there’s sexual violence if “a man … penetrates his wife without her consent or against her will.” It is rape under Republic Act #8353, which doesn’t consider whether the victim is legally related to the rapist.
The ruling in People of the Philippines vs. Edgar Jumawan (GR#187495, April 21, 2014) noted that since 1997, under R.A. #8353, rape has been reclassified as a crime against person and removed from the ambit of crimes against chastity. Relationship is “immaterial.”
And Section 1 of the said law “unqualifiedly uses the term ‘man’ in defining rape.”