Press Release
March 5, 2009

FRATERNITY MEMBERS WHO WALK NAKED BROKE
ANTI-OBSCENITY LAW

Senate Minority Leader Aquilino Q. Pimentel, Jr. (PDP-Laban) today said members of a college fraternity who walked and ran naked at University Belt broke the country's anti-obscenity law for which they may be held liable and sanctioned.

Pimentel echoed the outrage and shock of Filipinos at the sight of several male members of the Alpha Phi Omega Fraternity parading around naked, their private parts exposed for the spectators to see, on Nicanor Reyes (formerly Morayta) street, in front of the Far East University in Sampaloc, Manila Tuesday.

Still shots of the atrocious event were carried on the front pages of national dailies the following day. Some photos showed uniformed school girls using their cellphone cameras to take pictures of the naked men.

"What redeeming social value does displaying the male genitals to prurient or innocent audiences, young and old, possess to justify it?" the veteran senator from Mindanao asked.

He said this blatant display of male genitals by misguided young men is a spectacle that one would usually see only in some closed-circuit television shows or bars that cater to audiences, male or female, who pay to satisfy their prurient curiosity.

Pimentel pointed out that there are laws that penalize wanton obscene displays like frontal nudity of women and men - the outright depiction of the sex act or just plain erotic attention.

There are even rules that categorize films as fit for all ages or for certain age categories only.

"These laws and rules send the message that not all pictures, not all parts of the human body, not all acts of men ad women are fit for public viewing. That is why, I guess, some parts of the human body are called private parts," he said.

Pimentel said that in ancient India, the Raj or the absolute ruler was compelled by age-old customs to be paraded on a carriage atop an elephant with his male member exposed in all its glorious strength for all the subjects to admire. It was apparently believed that if the Raj could sustain that rigorous display for minutes on end, he was truly worthy of ruling over them.

He said that was in India of the old and he does not think that the weird tradition is still being practiced today.

"Unfortunately, it is being replicated in more blatant, more wanton, more callous exhibitionism that appears to flout our society's rules of decency," the minority leader said.

Pimentel called on the Senate committee on education to conduct an inquiry on why such obscene exercises are allowed to take place. He said the committee should find out what justifications, if any, make them acceptable.

"And if there are none, then Senate should initiate steps to sanction the parties responsible, including the University authorities, for failure to exercise their bounded duty to see to it that the laws and rules of this country prevail," he said.

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