Meet Manila’s Golden Gays, fighting for their rights one pageant at a time
The Catholic Church, which counts a majority of the nation’s 105 million people as believers, remains a major force in Philippine society and has resisted anti-discrimination laws
Al Enriquez sheds his threadbare street vendor clothes like dead skin and develops a voguish, winking air once he slips into a gauzy gown and wig of tight blond curls.
He’s 82 years old and is one of the stars in a beauty pageant for elderly and poor gay men that’s about to start in a banquet hall on a rundown Manila street.
But this is not a rowdy, hooting drag show for tourists – instead it is part of the decades-long work of a collective of men like him to take care of their own. They call themselves the Golden Gays and they mean it.
“When I’m dressed like this I feel ecstatic and I feel that I don’t have any sadness in me,” Enriquez said. “I’m gay and I’m not embarrassed that I’m gay.”
The Philippines has a reputation of openness toward homosexuality, but experts say legal protections are lacking and the nation’s weak social safety net especially fails older gay people.