DOMINGO FROGOZO MAED EAS 265

Every person deserves to be valued and respected from other human beings. We all know
that human dignity is a sense of self-worth and to be treated ethically. Every person has the right
to freedom and to express his moral beliefs but it is depends on the ambience that we are going
to interact. There are some instances that some people accept and treated us well regardless of
age, gender, race and culture. Human dignity involves respect and compromise among the
different people of any society. Somehow, before judging the person we must know first his/her
background. In many cases, people were judged by their beauty, intelligence, economic status, or
ethnicity, forgetting that the very condition of being a human person is worthy of the utmost
dignity and respect.

I am born and raised in a judgmental society and being a gay is not fully accepted in our
community. When I was in Elementary I already experienced discrimination not only in my
neighbors but also in my family. Consequently, they are putting in their minds that every gay is
the same. So, I hide my true color until I finished my undergraduate study. I did not express
myself fully because in our place they believed that being part of the third party is a plague and it
is a sin. One of the reasons why I keep my gender because my brother really hates gay. One time,
we have given a chance to have a gay pageant in our barangay. I joined and grabbed the
opportunity to showcase myself that being a gay it is not just for fun that we are also human that
we need respect and love. For me, there is nothing wrong being part of LGBTQ+ community.
There is nothing wrong of being a gay. If there is wrong, it is not our gender; it is how we
express oneself that is not acceptable of majority.

Now, I am in the point that I cannot please all the people surrounds me. I am also human
that I have the right to be free of fear, violence and discrimination. I also have the right to find
peace in the understanding and acceptance of who I am. Thus, I do need to explain myself to
everybody. As long as I am living with peaceful life and not putting other’s down. Over and
above that I have a point in my life where I realized that other people’s perception of me is not
my responsibility anymore. Therefore, I do not categorize the people. I look at all of them as
people who have stories to share. Every single person in this society has a powerful story to tell.