A committee in the House of Representatives on Tuesday thumbed down the proposal of a lawmaker to take out “gender identity” from proposed the Comprehensive Anti-Discrimination Bill.
At a congressional hearing conducted by the House Committee on Human Rights chaired by Quezon City Rep. Bong Suntay voted 13-1 in favor of retaining gender identity in the bill.
Deputy Speaker Benny Abante said gender identity should not be included in the proposed measure, saying “it would be redundant already considering that we have already gender and sexual orientation.”
The committee deliberated on Substitute Bill to HBs 136, 4216, 4587, 4647, 4684, 5356, 5969, 6024, 6098 & 7217 – or the Comprehensive Anti-Discrimination Bill– of which Abante is one of the authors.
The billl provides that protected categories include sex, gender, sexual orientation, gender identity, gender expression, and sex characteristics. “Consequently, discrimination based on those grounds is prohibited.”
But Abante, a pastor, echoed his reservations about including gender identity in the bill.
“Perhaps, gender expression, I would somehow agree with that but gender identity, palagay ko is redundancy of term,” he added.
In response, Bataan Rep. Geraldine Roman, also the bill’s one author, disagreed with Abante, saying that gender identity and sexual orientation are two different terms.
“We should not eliminate gender identity. This is already a term that is internationally accepted even by the medical and psychological world. And here in our country, this is a term that is already defined by our existing laws,” Roman said.
“And for this reason I firmly believe that we have to retain gender identity. To say that this is redundancy is the opinion of our Deputy Speaker, but it is an opinion, after all,” she added.
To emphasize his point, Abante said “we have already made a lot of compromises” in the bill.
“To me, gender identity has been defined already by sexual orientation, by gender, and even by gender expression, that there is no more need to have gender identity in this bill as we have already made a lot of compromises towards the SOGIE (sexual orientation, gender identity and expression) people,” Abante said.
“The only request I have is let us remove gender identity because that is already too much of a compromise,” he added.