US ruling hailed in PH

REAL MEN SUPPORT GAY RIGHTS A rainbow flag, the symbol of gay pride and diversity, flutters in the air alongside the monument of Lapu-Lapu at Rizal Park, where members of an LGBT coalition joined the 21st Metro Manila Pride march on Saturday, a day after the US Supreme Court allowed same-sex marriage in all 50 states. Lapu-Lapu, the first Filipino hero to repulse foreign invaders led by Ferdinand Magellan in the Battle of Mactan in 1521, might as well symbolize the drawn-out struggle of gay Filipinos for the same right in the country. NIÑO JESUS ORBETA

Election issue

Macalalad said the nation should make LGBT rights an “election issue.”

“The LGBT community is growing. It’s maturing, it’s getting stronger. The more you prolong the struggle, the better we become,” he said.

“We consider it a triumph,” Fave Fabros, vice president for communications of The Project Red Ribbon, a group supporting people infected with the human immunodeficiency virus (HIV), said, referring to the US Supreme Court ruling.

“People all over the world have been working for that. We didn’t think it would happen during our lifetime,” he said.

‘Triumph for feminism’

Sylvia Estrada Claudio, a gender rights advocate and professor of women development studies at the University of the Philippines, said the decision was also “a triumph for feminism” because of the “intimate connections” between discrimination based on biological gender and discrimination based on sexual orientation, gender identity and expression.

“I can’t help but note that the three women justices voted for marriage equality, forming a solid core in what was a close vote,” she said, referring to Justices Ruth Bader Ginsburg, Sonia Sotomayor and Elena Kagan.

Falcis said people, by reading the ruling, could see and realize that “justices trained to be objective and logical have determined that there is no reason to deny same-sex couples the human right to love another person and have that love legally recognized.”

Legal protection

Danton Remoto, founder of Ang Ladlad party-list representing Filipino gay men and women, said the US Supreme Court ruling would give a “legal precedent” for a ruling in favor of same-sex unions in the Philippines, referring to Falcis’ petition.

“What’s good about this is the legal protection,” Remoto said.

The US Supreme Court ruling, he said, “touches the very heart of same-sex relationships: that now you can marry and live with the one you love, your union protected by the legal mantle of the state.”

Remoto said recognition of same-sex marriage in the Philippines may be achieved partly by working for an end to discrimination not just against LGBT people, but also against indigenous peoples and people with disabilities.

If the Philippine Supreme Court decides in favor of same-sex unions, he said, LGBT people will have the same rights enjoyed by heterosexual couples, such as legal child adoption.

But this would take time, he said.

“Change is slow in the Philippines because of the Catholic Church and the conservative elements are still alive,” Remoto said.

Not religious issue

Crescencio Agbayani Jr., founding pastor of the Lesbian, Gay, Bisexual, Transgender and Straight (LGBTS) Christian Church, said LGBT people expected opposition from the Catholic Church, but stressed that the local struggle “is not a religious issue but for legal protection.”

“We are asking for inherent and equal rights. If they do not like same-sex marriage, we respect that,” Agbayani said. “But we hope you understand us and acknowledge that same-sex couples exist.”

Archbishop Socrates Villegas, president of the Catholic Bishops’ Conference of the Philippines (CBCP), said in a statement that the Church would continue teaching that marriage “is an indissoluble bond of man and woman.”

Villegas said, however, that the Church won’t discriminate against LGBTs.

The Church will study the US Supreme Court’s decision “with assiduousness, and revisit our concepts and presuppositions, always with an eye to being faithful to the Gospel and to the mission of the Church,” Villegas said.

“There is much that the Church receives that is part of the deposit of faith of which she is not maker but guardian and steward,” he said.

“If there is an undeniable difference between man and woman, there is also an undeniable difference between the permanent union of a man and a woman,” he said.

‘Ideological colonization’

Fr. Jerome Secillano, executive secretary of the CBCP Public Affairs Committee, said that with the US Supreme Court ruling, the “ideological colonization” of the family that Pope Francis has warned about is coming and Filipinos must be ready to resist it.

Secillano said the US Supreme Court ruling would have far-reaching effects across the globe, including the Philippines where, he noted, LGBTs were campaigning for marriage equality.

“When that happens, it will test the character of our lawmakers if they will succumb to the pressures or continue to hold on to the Filipinos’ venerable tradition, culture and belief that marriage is between man and woman,” Secillano said.

“This early, we should resist what Pope Francis said about ‘ideological colonization,’ where philosophies from the West are adopted to suit lifestyles,” he said.

Secillano also said that while recognizing people’s rights is one of the “noblest things governments can do,” it is also incumbent upon governments to protect and uphold long-held values and cultures that characterize their peoples.

“Governments should not destroy the moral and cultural fabric of their nations, otherwise they will destroy the very foundations on which their nations are built,” he said.

‘Don’t call it marriage’

Archbishop Emeritus Oscar Cruz, the judicial vicar of the CBCP National Appellate Matrimonial Tribunal, said some pastors in the Philippines were already presiding at same-sex unions, “but they should call these other names, not marriage.”

“They can call it holy union, conjugal partnership, no problem. But don’t call it marriage because that will be a contradiction in terms,” Cruz said.

He explained that “marriage” comes from the Latin matrimonium, with its root mater, meaning “mother,” which indicates its principal objective—the begetting of children.

Cruz said same-sex unions were among the threats to the family mentioned by Pope Francis during his visit to the Philippines in January. The others, he said, were divorce and the reproductive health law.

“But the Church will continue to teach, especially through marriage encounters and lay apostolates, what marriage is,” Cruz said. “We will continue to teach even if they don’t listen to us.” With reports from Kristine Felisse Mangunay, AP and AFP

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