US ruling hailed in PH

If Tom and Joe can now marry anywhere in the United States, can Tomas and Jose do the same soon in the Philippines?

The lesbian, gay, bisexual and transgender (LGBT) community hopes it will happen here following Friday’s decision by the US Supreme Court allowing gay unions throughout the nation, lawyer Jesus Nicardo Falcis III said on Saturday.

But “conservative elements” may get in the way, said Falcis, who has asked the Supreme Court to invalidate provisions in the Family Code that limit marriage to a man and a woman.

Falcis said he was “cautiously optimistic” that the US Supreme Court ruling would have a “strong impact” on his petition.

“I am optimistic because our Constitution’s Bill of Rights, especially the equal protection clause, is patterned after the US Constitution,” he said.

“And usually, our Supreme Court is easily persuaded to follow decisions by the US Supreme Court because we use the same standards the US uses to analyze violations of fundamental rights,” he added.

Earlier on Friday, President Barack Obama praised the ruling, saying it had “made our union a little more perfect.”

READ: Obama: Gay marriage ruling “a big step toward equality”

Resolving a 2013 challenge to the Defense of Marriage Act, five of the nine justices on the US Supreme Court voted on Friday to allow same-sex unions in all 50 states, triggering wild jubilation and tears of joy across the country.

Justice Anthony Kennedy threw in the vote that handed the narrow victory to the gay-rights movement. In his majority opinion, Kennedy wrote that the Constitution requires all 50 states to carry out and recognize marriages between people of the same sex.

Flag-waving LGBT advocates on the packed Supreme Court forecourt—some in tears—cheered, danced, shouted “USA! USA!” and sang “The Star-Spangled Banner” in celebration.

On Friday night, the White House was lit up in rainbow colors in celebration of the Supreme Court ruling.

READ: US Supreme Court extends same-sex marriage nationwide

The ruling will put an end to same-sex marriage bans in the 14 states that still maintain them, and provide an exclamation point for breathtaking changes in social norms in the United States in recent years.

As recently as last October, just more than one-third of the 50 states permitted gay marriages.

Inspiration to PH Gay Pride

“This is an inspiration to us,” Red Macalalad, head of the march organizer Task Force Pride 2015, said, referring to the US Supreme Court ruling. “All landmark decisions are the outcomes of struggles.”

Several hundred gay men and women and transgender people in Manila held a Gay Pride rally at Rizal Park yesterday to celebrate the US Supreme Court ruling, which they said was a victory for their cause.

About 500 people marched around the park, many carrying placards and streamers saying “Fight for Love” and waving rainbow banners.

Some marchers came with pets dressed in rainbow costumes.

Jonas Bagas, executive director of the pro-LGBT rights group TLF Share, said the US Supreme Court ruling “will reverberate in other corners of the world.”

“We hope that after this decision, the struggle for equality can be reframed to go beyond marriage equality so that we can address other dehumanizing situations that LGBTs encounter,” he said.

Macalalad said a similar event could happen in the Philippines.

“It could and should happen [here]. Human rights should be enforced completely. Let us stop saying that only a few can have privileges,” he said, adding that LGBTs in the Philippines receive only “piecemeal” recognition.

Macalalad said the country’s leaders should be sensitive to changes happening in other countries. He called for the passage of the antidiscrimination bill, which he said was languishing in Congress.

He said the bill, if passed into law, would protect LGBTs against discrimination at work and other places.

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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