IN a 1976 interview with Playboy magazine, then-US presidential candidate Jimmy Carter discussed both his deep spirituality and moral flaws. Despite his faithfulness to his wife, Carter admitted that he had committed a sin. “I have committed adultery in my heart many times,” he said in the interview. He told the interviewer that he had asked God for forgiveness. There is a verse in Matthew, Carter added, about God’s forgiveness for men’s weaknesses.
Circa 2026, in the Philippine context, a crude version of Carter’s “lusting over women in my mind and heart,” is right now one of the most talked about statements in political circles. The version from gas station operator cum Quezon City Rep. Bong Suntay, however, was not the moral fail admitted by Jimmy Carter: the general frailty and weakness of men that stemmed from their secret longings — secret longings that were in contradiction with their deeply held spirituality.
Moral failings and deep spirituality were never the context of Suntay’s statement. It was not even a generalized statement about married men having secret longings for other women in “their hearts and minds,” then asking God for forgiveness for holding those secret longings. Suntay’s admission was rather of the garden-variety version. A specific woman was involved, the actress Anne Curtis. Deep spirituality and a deeper introspection into man’s moral flaws are apparently beyond the reach of Suntay’s cerebral faculties.
Suntay’s version was unalloyed longing after supposedly seeing the actress in person. Then in a bizarre turn, Suntay injected a political color to that imagined longing for Curtis. Suntay said his statement about Curtis was entirely like the allegation that Sara Duterte once threatened to kill President Ferdinand Marcos Jr. via the gory way of decapitation. That threat to kill was entirely in the mind of the Duterte princeling, a purely imagined thing that would not take place in reality, according to Suntay. Just like his longing for Curtis, which was purely in his imagination.
Where Suntay made those bizarro equivalencies was also an overtly political setting. It was during a hearing called by the committee on justice of the House of Representatives to discuss the sufficiency in form of the impeachment cases filed against Sara Duterte. Suntay, in his desperation to demonstrate his devotion and fealty to the young Duterte, regaled the House hearing on his imagined lusting, which he equated with the kill threat on Marcos Jr. that existed purely, he claimed, in the mind of Sara Duterte. With the threat to kill an imagined thing, the basis for the impeachment collapses, so claimed Suntay.
As the Bard wrote, “bad things end up badly.” Suntay’s invocation of a secret longing to show his devotion to the young Duterte, backfired spectacularly.
“What a disgusting man,” posted Jasmine Curtis-Smith, the sister of Anne. Friends of the Curtis sisters from the entertainment world whose megaphones can reach millions because of their fandoms, likewise slammed Suntay. An entire cottage industry of Suntay-bashing from netizens emerged, the force and intensity of which muted the lame defense of Suntay from the usual suspects — his comrades in the DDS movement.
The fallout from Suntay’s professed lusting, “coming on Women’s Month no less,” according to Quezon City Mayor Joy Belmonte, continues.
Belmonte reminded Suntay that the Quezon City council had passed a Gender Development Code during the time Suntay, then a city councilor, was the council’s majority leader. The Code is a comprehensive list of women’s rights, primarily against sexual harassment, objectification and misogyny. A city ordinance, Bawal Bastos ordinance, seeks penalties against statements that degrade and sexually objectify women, like the statement of Suntay on Anne Curtis.
On the national stage, Sen. Risa Hontiveros said there is an existing law which she authored, the Bawal Bastos Law, that imposes penalties for “gender-based harassment,” which was exactly what Suntay did in his imagined lusting for the actress. That same law also penalizes sexually suggestive statements.
Absent a criminal complaint, the House of Representatives has directed its ethics committee to carry out an inquiry on the lewd statements of Suntay. The House committee on women and gender equality initiated the inquiry, with the first committee hearings to be scheduled this month, Women’s Month.
Private citizens have likewise filed complaints before the House, with that same intent, a full-blown probe into the statements of Suntay.
Was Suntay remorseful ? Has he fully accepted his failings? Has he invoked the passages from Matthew to seek God’s forgiveness for his weaknesses like Jimmy Carter did 50 years ago?
Hardly.
His sense was this. If you want to drive a point, you have to take a hit. He issued a boilerplate apology, then said that his lewd phrasing also meant that the message of devotion to the Duterte princeling was heard loud and clear.
If you want to express total and unqualified fealty to the Duterte princeling, you have to take a risk and utter the risqué.
That’s Suntay, truly DDS.