Few topics come up online on a daily basis lasting weeks, if not months. But the Sexual Orientation and Gender Identity & Expression (SOGIE) bill, designated as Senate Bill 689 sponsored by Sen. Francis Pangilinan, truly is our issue du jour.
For the first time, the Philippine Congress is tackling a piece of legislation that directly has to do with the rights of the Lesbian, Gay, Bisexual, Transexual, Queer (LGBTQ+).
Needless to say, strong opinions abound on all sides of the matter. And the challenge often is, “Well, have you actually read the SOGIE Bill?”
Ideally, that should help. But this isn’t often the case since the bill is rather hard to read, even for a law graduate like myself. It is worded in dense, technical English that I completely sympathize with anyone who has tried and been no wiser for it.
But I will try to do just that, in series form, because there is just so much to unpack and digest in this controversial little bill.
This first installment has to do with the basis for the bill according to the main sponsor. The second one will explore whether or not the SOGIE bill threatens other rights and freedoms in law and the Constitution. And the last article will propose some answers to the question of where we can go from here.
The SOGIE Bill is apparently driven by dubiously-presented data.
The very first line of the Bill, which is in its Explanatory Note, reads, “According to the survey ‘The Global Divide on Homosexuality’ by the Pew Research Center, 73 percent of adult Filipinos agree that homosexuality should be accepted by society.”
However, this loses much of its luster when you open up the actual study online. It turns out that the sample size for this survey was a mere 804 Filipino adults, out of more than 90 million Filipinos in 2013.
I am not a professional statistician by any means, but 804 out of 90 million does seem to be too small a representation of Filipinos across the nation.
Even the failure of the LGBT party-list, Ang Ladlad, to win a seat in the latest elections should probably give Senator Pangilinan caution.
However, even if we were to accept the Pew survey as totally credible, it should be noted that the wording of the proposition in the survey is a more general “homosexuality should be accepted by society” compared to “the SOGIE Bill should be passed”. Those are two different things, and the contents of the SOGIE Bill might not necessarily be what the assumed 73 percent had in mind.
Another number Pangilinan cited was the 70,000 in attendance at the latest Metro Manila Pride Parade.
While that is certainly more than 804, that still only rounds out to one-half of one percent of the total population of Metro Manila at more than 12 million.
Senator Pangilinan certainly intended these figures to be seen as devastatingly-significant because the next paragraph literally begins with: “Despite these overwhelming numbers….” But if he wants to play the figures on this, it works rather to his disadvantage.
The Explanatory Note seems to reveal the bill’s approach to success based on how many people might be supportive of the measure.
What is missing, however, is hard facts and data that would give us the actual state of affairs in the Philippines vis-í -vis SOGIE discrimination.
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Pangilinan would have benefited from at least a cursory description of how prevalent discrimination against the LGBT truly is, perhaps citing actual cases of discrimination against the LGBT, tallies of relevant police reports, numbers of cases filed against employers accused and adjudged to be guilty of discrimination based on SOGIE, and so on.
Otherwise, is there really a widespread issue deserving of redemptive and protective legislation? There very well could be, but you would not have known it based on the Explanatory Note to the bill.
Now, Pangilinan might not represent every single SOGIE advocate’s motivations, but insofar as the bill is concerned up at the Senate, that is what we have. Even at this preliminary point, it does a disservice to its intended beneficiaries by being a little tepid.
Moreover, there is no mention as to how current laws are insufficient to address discriminatory acts against the LGBTQ.
There wasn’t even a mere assertion to that effect, which weakens the bill’s necessity all the more.
Even in the hearings already being undertaken, I have yet to hear a legal expert or professor of law giving an opinion as to the dearth in status quo of legal remedies for the LGBTQ discriminated upon.
Up to this point, we have not yet entered into the meat and the body of the bill. The next article, Part 2, promises to do so in some detail.
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Author’s email: [email protected]
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