Phillipines, April 08: Homosexuals in the Philippines won a political victory today as the country’s highest court ruled a gay rights party could stand in next month’s elections.
Saying that homosexuality was not a crime, the Supreme Court ordered the Commission on Elections (Comelec) to accredit the Ang Ladlad political party for the May 10 vote.
“The Comelec is directed to grant petitioner’s application for party-list accreditation,” the ruling said.
In November the election commission barred Ang Ladlad, whose name translates as “coming out”, from the polls, citing moral grounds.
The party hopes to win seats in Congress through a system under which organisations representing certain marginalised sectors of society are voted in.
The court today noted that some sectors of the largely Catholic Philippines frown on homosexuals largely because of religious views on their sexuality.
“Nonetheless, we recall that the Philippines has not seen fit to criminalise homosexual conduct,” the court said.
“We won! We won! Philippine Supreme Court says YES to Ang Ladlad partylist,” the party said in a one-line statement sent to supporters on Facebook and Twitter.
“Long live LGBTs (lesbians, gays, bisexuals and transgenders).”
One of the election commissioners, Nicodemus Ferrer, explained the ban on Ang Ladlad by citing verses from the Bible and the Koran that explicitly said homosexuality was immoral.
“We use the Bible and Koran to guide us in what is morally right and wrong. Maybe they are using another guideline,” said Mr Ferrer, a lay minister in the church.
The Philippines is Asia’s bastion of Catholicism, but while the Church remains highly conservative many Filipinos keep an open view about sexuality.
As well as voting for new members of parliament, more than 50 million people will also choose a new president, vice president and thousands of local officials next month.
—Agencies