Church leaders protest vs pro-LGBT bills anew
CAGAYAN DE ORO Renewed calls opposing two new legislations that support the advocacies of the country’s lesbian, gay, bisexual and transgender (LGBT) communities were made anew by leaders and members of evangelical churches in Mindanao through a protest action over the weekend.
The Mindanao Evangelical Leaders Council (MELC) has expressed its objection to the two bills approved recently by the Lower House.
Counterpart version of these legislation will be discussed and deliberated on in the Senate soon.
MELC is a broad coalition of evangelical bishops, faith-based organization leaders, and pastoral group heads in Mindanao.
In a position paper, the coalition said they are against house bills 4982, which, if passed into law, will prohibit the discrimination of the members of the LGBTs, and 6595, which will allow same-sex marriage in a largely conservative and Christian country.
HB 4982 is also known as the Sexual Orientation or Gender Identity or Expression (Sogie) bill.
LGBT is also called LGBTIQ which includes those categorized as having “intersex” characteristics, and “queers” or those who identify themselves homosexuals and other sexual orientation.
MELC president Bishop Genes Udang said that while the evangelical churches respect the LGBT individuals, they cannot allow these bills to be made into laws since these would in turn “discriminate” the majority of the Filipinos. “In crafting the bills aimed at protecting the LGBT members, our lawmakers didn’t realize that the same bills will actually discriminate us, the majority,” Udang said in an interview over the weekend, where evangelical church members and other advocates staged a protest action expressing their opposition to the bills at the Divisoria Plaza here on Saturday evening.
He said they have LGBTs from among their faithful but insisted that being an LGBT member is a lifestyle and not a gender issue, and that no laws must be created to cater to this particular lifestyle.
“If that is your lifestyle, so be it, we don’t have anything against it. But to try to enforce it that will, in effect, disorient our lifestyle, that is something that we must make a stand on because it curtails and it violates our Constitutional rights,” the bishop added.
Whether a person is an LGBT or not, Udang said, everyone is guaranteed protection by the Philippine Constitution and other existing laws of the land. “If they (LGBT) are discriminated in the workplace, for instance, we have the labor code to protect them,” he said.