I, Dustin Celestino, the number one authority on anti-RH arguments, have been mentioned in a recent article by Sun Star Baguio. In this article, my arguments against the RH Bill have been justly juxtaposed with the arguments of none other than the principal author of the RH Bill, congressman Edcel Lagman.
Here’s paragraph #4:
Dustin Celestino, a critic, said, “[The] RH bill is wrong because it then assumes that the Philippines is overpopulated; it assumes that contraceptives are good for mankind and women; the RH Bill will put Filipinos into extinction; it assumes that reproductive education and contraceptives will effectively reduce cases of abortion; and assumes that parents don’t teach their children about sex.”
Here’s paragraph #5:
But Lagman fortified and added, “Reproductive Health Bill promotes information and access to both natural and modern family planning methods, which are medically safe and legally permissible. It assures an enabling environment where women and couples have the freedom of choice on the mode of family planning they want to adopt based on their needs, personal convictions and religious beliefs. He added “the bill does not have any bias for or against natural or modern family planning. Both modes are contraceptives methods and their purpose is to prevent unwanted pregnancies.”
Let me repeat, in this article, the Pro-RH side is represented by the principal author of the RH Bill, Edcel Lagman. The Anti-RH argument is represented by the number one authority on Anti-RH arguments, me.
It’s truly a clash of the titans because my opinions for why the RH bill is bad (dinosaurs are extinct because they used condoms, therefore people will become extinct if they used condoms) bear as much weight as any scientific study that proves how the RH Bill could be beneficial to our country.
I’m very proud of what I’ve accomplished as the number one authority on anti-RH arguments. I would like to thank my friends and family for their support. I would like to thank all the Catholics who quoted me, especially St. John the Baptist Parish of Taytay, Rizal for making a virtual poster based on my gospel:
But I have a confession to make: I’M NOT ANTI-RH.
I never thought I’d be quoted by Anti-RH people (and media!) to make arguments against the RH Bill, because the article I wrote (“Why the RH Bill is Bad”) was satire. It’s even categorized as humor. I thought this was obvious because:
1. No, you can’t live on the ocean floor.
2. No, dinosaurs didn’t use condoms.
3. No, women can’t have abortions if they’re not pregnant.
4. No, priests don’t have the most knowledge and experience with sex and reproduction… well, that point is debatable.
In any case, there is a reason why people thought that the article was serious. The formal term for the effect is called Poe’s Law.
The core of Poe’s law is that a parody of something extreme by nature becomes impossible to differentiate from sincere extremism. A corollary of Poe’s law is the reverse phenomenon: sincere fundamentalist beliefs being mistaken for a parody of that belief.
People can’t tell if the article I wrote was a parody or not because they’ve probably met people online and elsewhere that have made statements that are just as, if not more, absurd. As Red Tani has mentioned in his article “Satire and Straw Man,” “Some anti-RH arguments are so stupid that satirizing them is almost too easy.”
What’s interesting to me, however, is some people’s insistence on quoting me and pointing to my article as a credible source of Anti-RH arguments. Did they actually think that dinosaurs used condoms? It seems to me that a lot of Catholics read my article in the same way they read their Bible – they only quote and remember stuff they agree with while ignoring every other fallacy found in the same document.
I'm a Catholic and I am anti-RH. Scanning your post "Why the RH Bill is Bad" I've already figured out that you were being satirical/ironic. Of course some people wouldn't recognize irony in some essays because it's not always being used – even the proponent of the RH Bill himself countered YOU.
You ARE wrong. People will not avoid being poor by making less babies. They can avoid being poor by actually doing something about their situation, like looking for and going to work – not depending on the government to make up another superficial bill.
It's not just that we're overpopulated. It's because there are more consumers than there are supplies. Our economy is not stable. Why don't we do something about THAT?
Look at New Zealand. There are more elderly than there are children. The money they have will be used more for them than the youth. Not all these children will even live to 30 because of various factors. What happens then? How can they reproduce? Who will work for their country when they die? Don't you wonder why they hire workers from foreign countries? It's exactly because of that – because if they don't hire them, they might not have the chance to reproduce and create new generations.
The population is indeed our biggest asset. Do you wanna know what isn't? Our quality of education. Not even every child gets to go to school. If every single one of them did, our country would improve a whole lot better.
Of course abortion CAN be prevented! It's all a matter of choice! If you choose to take in pills that would harm not just your body but your child as well, IT'S YOUR CHOICE!
The RH Bill is wrong not because it will make people engage in pre-marital and extra-marital sex activities (because yes, a lot of them already have, as you have satirically put out) – but because it will make them think that it is right, that it is moral, when in any case, it is not.
Parents should teach their children about sex, at the right age, at the right time. At least, they would if they actually think – which most Filipinos do. Schools should already have been studying about the human body and the reproductive system in their curriculum long before this RH Bill was proposed.
The article would actually confuse a lot of people of less intellect and people who actually believe that there exists some who actually believe dinosaurs used condoms and that the Philippines has a better economy than Japan, Italy, and Singapore (I’m an economics graduate and you don’t even have to have an economics degree to figure this one out). Maybe you should have placed a note at the end of the article stating that the whole thing was satirical because the ability to sense sarcasm isn’t actually very common. That is of course if people of less intellect have the patience and brain cells to actually read the whole article and process every bit of it.