In a unanimous decision, the Supreme
Court of the Philippines has dismissed a
landmark petition to legalize same-sex
marriage in the majority Catholic country.
On Tuesday, the country’s highest court
ruled that Jesus Nicardo Falcis III, an
openly gay attorney who initiated the
petition in 2015, had no legal standing in
the case since he had not applied for a
marriage license, the South China Morning
Post reported.
Despite its decision, in a text released to
journalists, the court noted the Southeast
Asian nation’s 1987 Constitution “does not
define, or restrict, marriage on the basis of
… sexual orientation, or gender identity” and
said that same-sex unions “may, for now,
be a matter that should be addressed to
Congress.”
Falcis, who added a gay and a lesbian
couple to his petition in 2016, sought to
declare Articles 1 and 2 of the Family Code
unconstitutional. These provisions limit
marriage to a union between a man and a
woman.
The high court also held Falcis and his co-
counsels Darwin Angeles, Keisha Trina
Guangko and Christopher Maranan liable
for indirect contempt, the Philippine news
site philstar.com reported.
The court explained that “[t]o forget [the
bare rudiments of court procedure and
decorum] – or worse, to purport to know
them, but really, only to exploit them by
way of propaganda – and then, to jump
headlong into the taxing endeavor of
constitutional litigation is a contemptuous
betrayal of the high standards of the legal
profession.”
Declaring the decision “disheartening,”
Falcis, along with other gay rights activists,
have vowed to continue fighting for same-
sex marriage in the country where 80% of
its 107 million people are Roman Catholic,
according to philstar.com. Abortion and
divorce are both illegal in the country, due
in part to resistance from the Catholic
Church.
A 2015 Pew Research Center report found
that Filipinos have conservative views on
social issues , reflective of the country’s
Catholic influence. Two-thirds (67%) say
that getting a divorce is morally
unacceptable and overwhelmingly view
having an abortion as immoral (93%).
However, an earlier Pew report found that
more than 70% of Filipinos say that
homosexuality should be accepted.
Although flip-flopping on the issue,
Philippine President Rodrigo Duterte said
as recently as July 2018 that he favors
civil unions over same-sex marriage.
In March 2017, he told journalists that
same-sex marriage and other issues
around sexuality and gender were part of
Western culture, not Filipino culture.
“That’s for them. That can’t apply to us,
because we are Catholics,” he said,
according to The Washington Post. “[T]here
is the civil code, which states you can only
marry a woman for me, and for a woman
to marry a man. That’s the law in the
Philippines.”
Still, Duterte said the rights of the LGBT
community would be protected during his
presidency.
“There will be no oppression and we will
recognize your importance in society,”
Duterte said at an LGBT conference in
Davao City, Philippines, local outlets
reported.
In 2016, professional boxer and Filipino
congressman Manny Pacquiao made
headlines after calling those in same-sex
relationships “worse than animals.”
The former eight-division world champion
later defended his stance as based on his
beliefs on the Bible: “What I am
condemning is the act. I’m happier
because I’m telling the truth. … It’s worse if
we will hide the truth,” the boxer clarified.
At the time, Pacquiao was publicly backed
by the Catholic Church in the Philippines,
with Father Jerome Secillano, executive
secretary of the Catholic bishops’ public
affairs office, stating: “This is really in the
Bible. There is this quote he (Pacquiao)
uses from the Bible and we cannot change
that.”
“The church … says that if this is your
lifestyle, if this is your orientation, then we
respect that, we cannot condemn them,”
the priest said.
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