Gays can do whatever they want as long as they don’t break the law, President Rodrigo Duterte said Thursday as he once again turned back on his campaign promise to legalize same-sex marriages in the country.
“If it makes the gays happy, let them be. I do not condemn anybody there. What makes you happy, good, just don’t violate the law, period,” Duterte told reporters when asked on what made him change his mind about his campaign promise.
Duterte, who has just arrived from a four-day official visit to Myanmar and Thailand, cited the Family Code as a reason on why he reneged on his promise.
“But for the reason that there is a law which say—in the Family Code sa ating Civil Code defining the relations of non—our society, marriages and everything, it says that marriage is always between a man and a woman,” he said.
“If I allow it then I would have violated the law.”
Duterte’s pronouncements contradicted his remarks during the 2016 presidential campaign when he said that he would consider legalizing same-sex marriage, if he becomes president.
“Definitely, the gays were created by God… God made them so medyo nagkamali ‘yung bilangan diyan sa Bible [there is a slight error in the Bible]. [It should be] Adam, Eve, and the gays,” he said last January 2016.
Duterte, who stressed he is against harrassment and bigotry, also believes members of the LGBT (lesbian, gay, bisexual, and transgender) community should be welcomed to join the military.
An anti-discrimination bill for members of the LGBT community is currently pending before Congress, with a technical working group working to harmonize eight bills seeking to prohibit discrimination on the basis of ethnicity, race, religion or belief, sex, gender, sexual orientation, gender identity and expressions, language, disability, human immunodeficiency virus (HIV) status, and other status.