Abstract:

The earliest published references to same-sex sexualities in Philippine psychology are two descriptive field studies from more than three decades ago. One was an unobtrusive study of attitudes toward being gay using graffiti in public toilets (Sechrest & Flores, 1969). The other was an ethnographic inquiry into “male homosexual” sex work (Nery, 1979). Both papers were highly exploratory, took place in the street corners of the city of Manila, and as one author wrote, were “necessarily incomplete” (Nery, 1979, p. 32). The time has come for Filipino LGBT psychology research to move from these dark confined margins to the bright center, with rigor and rainbows in tow.