Tagged with CBCP …

May 13 2010
1 Comment
2010 elections, LGBT, LGBT rights, politics

The homophobes lost, but…

Rep. Abante during the Anti-Discrimination Bill hearing

Here’s some good news: three candidates from the conservative bloc lost in the senatorial and congressional elections. Bienvenido Abante, an incumbent representative in District 6, Manila City, lost to his rival Sandy Ocampo, a former congresswoman and currently Manila’s deputy mayor. Atty. Jo Imbong, legal counsel of the Catholic Bishops Conference of the Philippines, ran for senator under the Catholic church-backed Ang Kapatiran Party, is among the bottom-dwellers in the senatorial race. Another pro-life bet, ex-senator Kit Tatad, has been unable to surpass the Top 20 benchmark.

Rep. Abante, as Chair of the House Committee on Human Rights, blocked the passage of a bill penalizing discrimination against lesbians, gays, bisexuals, and transgenders. Last year, Rep. Abante filed a bill criminalizing same-sex marriage and prohibiting co-habitation among between partners of the same sex.

He also opposed the enactment of the RH Bill, a controversial measure that provides access to reproductive health information and contraceptives.

Atty. Imbong, on the other hand, is the CBCP lobbyist that has rabidly campaigned against the RH Bill and Anti-Discrimination Bill in most congressional hearings. A “pro-life” advocate, Atty. Imbong has labeled the above bills as part of the Church-opposed DEATH bills, a cluster of measures promoting divorce, euthanasia, abortion, total reproductive health, and homosexuality (same-sex marriage). Continue reading →

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Nov 22 2008
1 Comment
Congress, politics, religion

Dear Bishop X

When you announced the other day that Bishops do not need sex education and that you actually have your sex education program, I instantly got a hard on. There’s nothing like listening to a man of cloth explaining the birds and the bees and the miraculous babies to arouse me instantaneously.

In high school, I got bored with flip charts showing the fallopian tube, the vans deferens (duh!), and all these organs. But with bees and birds – dude, my dear Bishop, I get the point. It’s so raw that it gets me off – no need to commit premarital sex, or in my case the dreaded immoral, infernal homosexual sex – and I do get the message instantaneously: the birds shouldn’t get the bees, they should get married first and promise to each other that the bird won’t eat the bee and bee won’t sting the bird. Commitment before the stomach. See? Continue reading →

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Jul 16 2008
2 Comments
Congress, politics, Sexual Health

GMA’s Quiapo politics

But then again, what’s new? Gloria Macapagal-Arroyo (GMA) may be a pathological liar, clearly a fraudulent president, a human rights violator, but she is an economist, one that got her education in the West at that. In short, she knows the economic perils of an exponential population growth and the burden it imposes on government resources. She knows, too, the strategic benefit of increasing access to reproductive health in terms of healthcare access for women and, ironically, in reducing cases abortion.

Why, then, this position? It is not devoutness, although she has claimed that God spoke directly to her to urge her to run during the last presidential elections (A curious Vatican gift to the Philippines. God is known to be partisan in the Philippines, and he has always made it a point to pick several candidates during elections). Her position is political – she doesn’t want to offend the talibans in the Catholic hierarchy, whose support has always been crucial for her political survival. One could not separate her position from the repeated refusal of the Catholic Bishops Conference of the Philippines to call for her resignation, impeachment or ouster.

What unites the position of the Catholic hierarchy and GMA’s is fraud and fundamentalism. CBCP has anchored its anti-abortion campaign on the Reproductive Health Bill despite the fact that the bill does not legalize abortion. The truth is, it would take more than an act of Congress to legalize abortion in the country: a constitutional provision that requires the State to “protect the life of the mother and the life of the unborn from conception” is popularly interpreted to be a de facto ban on abortion. Continue reading →

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Jul 16 2008
2 Comments
Congress, politics, Sexual Health

GMA's Quiapo politics

But then again, what’s new? Gloria Macapagal-Arroyo (GMA) may be a pathological liar, clearly a fraudulent president, a human rights violator, but she is an economist, one that got her education in the West at that. In short, she knows the economic perils of an exponential population growth and the burden it imposes on government resources. She knows, too, the strategic benefit of increasing access to reproductive health in terms of healthcare access for women and, ironically, in reducing cases abortion.

Why, then, this position? It is not devoutness, although she has claimed that God spoke directly to her to urge her to run during the last presidential elections (A curious Vatican gift to the Philippines. God is known to be partisan in the Philippines, and he has always made it a point to pick several candidates during elections). Her position is political – she doesn’t want to offend the talibans in the Catholic hierarchy, whose support has always been crucial for her political survival. One could not separate her position from the repeated refusal of the Catholic Bishops Conference of the Philippines to call for her resignation, impeachment or ouster.

What unites the position of the Catholic hierarchy and GMA’s is fraud and fundamentalism. CBCP has anchored its anti-abortion campaign on the Reproductive Health Bill despite the fact that the bill does not legalize abortion. The truth is, it would take more than an act of Congress to legalize abortion in the country: a constitutional provision that requires the State to “protect the life of the mother and the life of the unborn from conception” is popularly interpreted to be a de facto ban on abortion. Continue reading →

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