Ghost bustin’

The Philippines. A country faced with so many problems. Gas prices. Scarcity of food. Poverty. Disasters like the recent earthquake. With all these to confront, what’s a lawmaker to do? Why, focus on ghosting, of course.

We all know what it’s like. We get so close and intimate with another human being. We bond. We spend time. We laugh. And then all of a sudden, we wake up, and then bam. The other person disappears. Doesn’t respond to text messages. Doesn’t pick up the phone. No more hi or hello. Not even a goodbye. What the heck just happened?

But the other person is very much alive. The social media footprint is there, large as ever. At parties, in the gym, or having a coffee. It’s just that --you’re not on the other person’s radar. You’ve fallen off somehow. You’re of no account. You’ve been delegated to the realms of stranger-hood. In short, you’ve just been ghosted.

Well, never fear. Congressman Arnolfo Teves Jr. has a plan for that. He’s going to make ghosting a crime!

No news yet on the motivations behind his bill, so we can openly, I mean, only, speculate on why he wants to make ghosting a crime. And why he considers ghosting a form of “emotional abuse”, so egregious it deserves to be punished.

What experience, if any, does he have on being ghosted? Who ghosted him? What were the circumstances behind it? Perhaps the other person had a good reason to disappear? Like, he won the election (perfectly reasonable for couples where one party detests politics)? Does that mean he has never ghosted anyone at all? Ever? Or will anyone pop up to scream “hypocrite!”?

Well, we hope to find out. Meanwhile, all we have is the text of the bill he has filed, or House Bill 811, a.k.a. An Act Declaring Ghosting as an Emotional Offense. Afraid of getting caught in another trap, law-abiding citizen that I am, I reviewed the lingo of this new legal animal.

We lawyers tend to zoom in on the definition section, because that’s what will convict your client, or conversely, what will get him off the charges. And Teves has defined ghosting so loosely, it’s going to need some reworking in the backrooms of Congress.

For one, the bill is worded in such a way as to instantly let gay and lesbian couples off the hook. For the good Congressman, ghosting is “a form of emotional abuse (which) happens once a person is engaged in a dating relationship with the opposite sex which affects the mental state of the victim.”

Presto, just by this definition, same-sex couples can’t commit the crime. Which is inherently unfair, because gay guys have the same capacity to ghost as straight guys. And by the same token, LGBTQ folks also have hearts that can get broken (heartthrobs with jars of hearts, that’s your cue to keep on collecting those hearts!).

What is so strange is that the elements of the “act or omission” so vital for a court to determine when an accused has committed the crime are absent from the definition section. There is no language in the bill which dictates exactly what we can or cannot do before we break the law. Can we just not be on speaking terms for a week? Can we play mind games for a month? Can we torture the other person only intermittently, and show up smiling after a weekend fling?

What if after disappearing, we send a terse text message to say, “I don’t love you, goodbye. And by the way, you stink.” Is that enough to prevent the ghosting offense? I mean, we delivered an explanation, right? Although, one potentially even more hurtful than just disappearing.

Sadly, a judge will have to look at the bill’s explanatory notes to find the common notions of “ghosting”. That section has a rambling exposition on what ghosting is (cutting off all forms of communication), including some line about how a victim “will be constantly thinking of the welfare (of the jerk that ghosted) or the unexplained reasons of the own who ghosted” (Um, maybe he’s a jerk?).

But those explanatory notes, he cannot use to convict an accused. We therefore await the final form of this bill, and indeed, even its fate. Will we be constrained to be honest when breaking up, to be upfront with our wishes to date other people, or to be more careful with other people’s feelings? Those are good goals in themselves.

But I doubt this bill will be a recipe to unbreak my heart. I mean, anyone’s heart.