Several hundred gays, lesbians and transgender people held a Gay Pride rally today in the Philippine capital to push for LGBT rights and to celebrate the US Supreme Court decision recognizing gay marriages in all US states as a victory for their cause.
About 500 people marched around Manila's Rizal Park, many carrying placards and streamers saying "Fight for Love" and waving rainbow banners. Some came with pets dressed in rainbow costumes.
Jonas Bagas, executive director of the pro-LGBT rights group TLF Share, said the US court ruling "will reverberate in other corners of the world."
The rally was scheduled to commemorate the 1969 demonstrations in New York City that started the gay rights movement around the world. Bagas said the US court's decision yesterday made it more significant.
He said that in the predominantly Roman Catholic Philippines, where the church has fiercely opposed gay marriages along with divorce and artificial contraceptives, he expects the "conservative majority" to continue to block human rights for LGBTs.
"We hope that after this decision, the struggle for equality can be reframed to go beyond marriage equality so that we can address other dehumanising situations that LGBTs encounter," he said.
Sylvia Estrada Claudio, a gender rights advocate and professor of women development studies at the University of the Philippines, said the decision was also "a triumph for feminism" because of the "intimate connections" between discrimination based on biological gender and discrimination based on sexual orientation, gender identity and expression.
"I can't help but note that the three women justices voted for marriage equality, forming a solid core in what was a close vote," she said.
Same-sex unions are not legally recognised in the Philippines because the country's civil code limits marriages to a man and a woman.
