"Four people against 198 representatives, the LGBTQI community, and their straight allies. Unbelievable."
"Four people against 198 representatives, the LGBTQI community, and their straight allies. Unbelievable."
I was appalled to learn that the bill preventing discrimination on the basis of SOGIE (sexual orientation, gender identity, and expression) has been languishing in some form or another in Congress for almost 20 years.
The House of Representatives unanimously passed it two years ago. However, the counterpart bill moldered in the Senate for almost three years after Senator Risa Hontiveros sponsored it. It only reached second reading there.
As of May last year, the senators who expressed support for the measure were Loren Legarda, Grace Poe, Nancy Binay, Franklin Drilon, Bam Aquino, Chiz Escudero, Ralph Recto, Sonny Angara, JV Ejercito, Francis Pangilinan, Juan Miguel Zubiri, and Leila de Lima, while those opposed were Senate President Tito Sotto, Joel Villanueva, Manny Pacquiao, and Cynthia Villar.
The other senators of the previous Congress had not expressed an opinion either way, as far as I know: Win Gatchalian, Koko Pimentel, Antonio Trillanes IV, Panfilo Lacson, and Richard Gordon
The bill passed with 198 votes in the HoR without abstention or dissent, through the efforts of Reps. Geraldine Roman, Emmeline Aglipay-Villar, and Arlene “Kaka” Bag-ao. I can’t believe it got stuck in the Senate because it was blocked by four conservatives, the epitome of the patriarchy.
Four people against 198 representatives, the LGBTQI community, and their straight allies. Unbelievable.
Hontiveros vows to continue the struggle for the bill into the 18th Congress, where it should be a priority piece of legislation. Just like Hontiveros’ Safe Spaces Act that recently lapsed into law, the SOGIE measure seeks to protect a portion of the Filipino population who have been abused and harassed because of their SOGIE, against discriminatory treatment. It is a long-overdue measure.
According to Ma. Jiandra Bianca F. Deslate, an underbar associate of DivinaLaw who wrote about the matter on the firm’s website, House Bill No. 4982 or An Act Prohibiting Discrimination on the Basis of Sexual Orientation or Gender Identity or Expression (Sogie) and Providing Penalties Therefore is the first of its kind in the country.
“Other anti-discrimination bills have been filed in the past, but these were never SOGIE-specific, lumping the lesbian, gay, transgender, bisexual, and queer sector (LGBTQ++ sector) with others such as the differently abled or the indigenous groups.”
The SOGIE bill ensures that the equal protection clause of the 1987 Constitution covers the LGBTQI. It penalizes with fines and/or imprisonment discriminatory behaviors such as preventing their access to public services and establishments; treating them differently in the workplace; denying them admission to or expelling them from an educational institution; “outing” a person without their consent; and preventing children from expressing their SOGIE, among others.
As of last month, the SOGIE bill made history (not in a good way) by being the longest-running bill under the Senate interpellation period. Because it was not passed under the 17th Congress, it will have to go through the entire process of enactment again in the 18th Congress. It is a major setback in terms of time, and all because of those four holdouts in the Senate.
Girl, boy, bakla, tomboy, pare-pareho tayong tao. Pare-pareho tayong Pilipino. //FB and Twitter: @DrJennyO
