Let Lady Gaga dance

"Forget everything else and just dance." - Lady Gaga, Manila, 2012 Lady Gaga just wanted to dance, and the theocratic fascists would have preferred she not. Perhaps because they have two left feet, or because they fear the gyrations of hot women. Whatever the case, dancing has always represented a kind of militant freedom, a kinetic defiance of the immobile conservatism that prevents the movement of the individual brain and collective politics. This is why authoritarian men fear dancing (except when it’s Pandanggo sa Ilaw, where the women wear the baro’t saya). In 1965, when militarist and religious fanatics murdered thousands from the Gerwani women's group in Indonesia, they claimed these women had engaged in lewd dancing while gouging out the eyes of military officers (an inaccurate claim, of course). The leftwing libertarian Emma Goldman, reacting to the suppression of liberties in socialist revolutions, is rumored to have said, "If I can't dance, I don’t want to be part of your revolution.” Goldman was initially supportive of the Bolsheviks Russia, but when Lenin and his comrades curtailed press freedom and dictated the terms of art and expression, she knew the party (no pun intended) was over. The authoritarian mind, whether in its communist, fascist, or religious incarnation, thinks it can tell you what to read, view, listen to, and grind to. Various accounts from Stalin's USSR, Franco's Spain, and Mussolini's Italy describe these places as drab cultural wastelands. Dictators can torture and liquidate you, but they can also lull you to sleep. I've never been a Lady Gaga fan, but when conservative Christian groups called for the banning of her concert, I felt lucky to have a friend with a spare ticket. Remember, the religious Right – socialized to fear sex, provocative art, and rock and roll – is composed of the most boring people in the Philippines. As such, what they hate stands a good chance of being fun. And the Lady Gaga concert was, indeed, fun. From the moment she stepped out of an inflated vagina, I knew she would not be cowed by our domestic Taliban, and I knew she valued our dancing more than their "morals." Not that I begrudge the anti-Gaga protestors for being unable to share my enjoyment. That, as those who end up on the lucky side of a bargain say, is their loss. But I do take umbrage at their attempts to curb my fun, and that of - and this must be said given the implicit and explicit homophobia of the protesters - Gaga's LGBT fans. The rebuttal to groups like Biblemode Philippines and Philippines for Jesus Movement (their names are as boring and leaden as their causes) is remarkably simple, and I'm sure you've heard it before: if you don't like Gaga, don't watch. If you don’t want your kids to watch Gaga, don’t pay for their tickets. This logic is plain enough, but theocrats are uniquely dense. Representative Amado Bagatsing, not content with denying women reproductive health services, wants to formulate a national policy against “vulgar and shocking” shows, claiming Gaga is  “the epitome of everything that a decent society declares as wrong” because her music videos “promote blasphemy.” The congressman is, of course, free to take offense at Lady Gaga, in the same way we feminists take offense when he delays the vote on the RH bill. But would we ever call for the banning of his privilege speeches, for striking these out of the congressional record? His delaying tactics are literally causing deaths. To us, his speeches, which help sustain a situation leading to 11 maternal mortalities a day, are more immoral than the latest in a string of electro-house hits. But we do not call for a national policy that bans insensitive, bigoted, and misogynist speech. The reason we don’t is because we believe in the basic democratic principle of free expression. Bagatsing thinks he’s above this, maybe because he confuses the voice of God with that of a bishop in a Pajero. They may assert moral superiority all they want, but Bagatsing and religious conservatives do not have a privileged right to dictate the terms of “national culture.” Fanatic Bible-touting, as evidenced by Manny Pacquiao’s recent behavior, is indeed part of Philippine culture. But so is heresy amid religious power. Marcelo de Pilar, who wrote a satirical version of the Hail Mary, was one among many anti-clerical ilustrados who fought Spanish colonialism. There is nothing “un-Filipino” about a song like “Judas” (amazing track by the way) when one of our national heroes wrote a poem called “Aba Ginoong Barya.” That a so-called “Catholic country” continues to venerate heretics like del Pilar and Jose Rizal shows that religious devotion is not incompatible with an acceptance of religious criticism. Neither is it incompatible with fun. But if Bagatsing is right, and there is no room in decent society for shocking art, we might as well dispense with decency in favor of democracy. The latter, after all, is a value we all share. - GMA News