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I AM disappointed with the Commission on Elections’
decision disqualifying Ang Ladlad as a party-list group seeking
representation in Congress. Ang Ladlad, which literally means “The
Coming Out,” was seeking to represent the community of lesbians,
gays, bisexuals and transgenders (LGBT) in the country. I wrote
about the group in a column on September 19, 2006, entitled “The
Gay Vote.”
The Comelec junked Ang Ladlad’s
accreditation bid “for lack of merit.” In a resolution, it said
Ang Ladlad failed to prove that it has a national membership, a
requirement for party-list accreditation. The Comelec said that
reports from its field offices revealed Ang Ladlad doesn’t exist
in most regions in the country. The Comelec said that while it
doesn’t doubt the sincerity of Ang Ladlad in running, the law must
be followed.
And Ladlad’s president, Danton
Remoto, disputed the Comelec’s contention regarding their
group’s lack of national membership. Remoto filed a motion for
reconsideration three times, a valiant but ultimately futile effort
as the poll body refused to budge.
Remoto, an English professor
teaching at the Ateneo University, said Ang Ladlad not only has a
national organization, it also has a healthy and ready constituency
of at least four million gay voters, excluding sympathizers to their
cause. Ang Ladlad, he said, was not fighting for special rights but
equal rights for the LGBT community.
Ang Ladlad believes that the
LGBT’s rights and concerns have been underrepresented in Congress.
Remoto said that if only the gay legislators in Congress just came
out in the open to represent the LGBT community, then Ang Ladlad
would have had no need to run as a party-list group.
In my previous article I said I
was all for Ang Ladlad’s accreditation. In a modern democratic
society, we should all be involved in campaigns meant to end legal
discrimination on grounds of sexual orientation and gender identity.
Great strides have been made toward fighting for equal rights for
women in society and there’s no reason why there shouldn’t be a
similar movement in behalf of the LGBT community, which has and
continues to face great discrimination especially in workplaces. For
instance, just recently there was that controversial statement by
the spokesman for the Philippine National Police, wherein he warned
that gay policemen can be dismissed if they show themselves too
flamboyant or if they walk or march too “gay-ly.”
Such a statement is just one of
many cases clearly demonstrating how the LGBT community often finds
itself “outside the kulambo” of the so-called straight
establishment. There is clearly a need for a party-list group to be
a force of change in Congress for the LGBT community, one that would
be effective in curbing discrimination and gaining acceptance for
it. The Comelec decision turning down Ang Ladlad effectively says
that while the group certainly has the courage to do that, it sadly
doesn’t have the resources or the national organization.
Well, for one, I hope that the
reason the Comelec cited—the lack of a national organization—is
honest enough, at least in the eyes of its commissioners. I hope
they were not influenced by certain powerful sectors of Philippine
society, who can’t seem to reconcile their notions of moral values
and integrity in public office with homosexuality. I hope they were
not afraid of the potential backlash from the Catholic hierarchy,
for instance, should Ang Ladlad have been allowed to run and it won
then pushed for such a controversial issue like the legal
recognition of gay relationships as a marital union.
Secondly, I hoped that the
Comelec judiciously investigated the qualifications of the other
partylist groups it approved, just as judiciously as it investigated
Ang Ladlad.
Obviously, we now have various
party-list groups supposedly representing various marginalized
sectors (athletes, tricycle drivers, the anti-Left agenda, just to
name a few). Akbayan Rep. Etta Rosales called attention to 11
party-list groups, which she claimed were being used as fronts by
the Arroyo administration, including Biyaheng Pinoy, whose nominee
is the Comelec chairman’s brother. I hope the Comelec can pay
special attention to the integrity and qualification of these groups
in the same manner that it scrutinized Ang Ladlad.
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