UP College of Law stands with LGBTQI+ community, calls for equal rights

The University of the Philippines College of Law expressed its support for the LGBTQI+ community and called for equality.

In a statement released on Wednesday as Pride Month drew to a close, the institution said that as agents of the law, they bear the responsibility to "inform, reform, and animate our legal system with the experiences of our LGBTQI+ citizens."

As teachers, they said that it was their duty "to make the command of our Constitution's Bill of Rights meaningful to the LGBTQI+ community."

"The experiences of Filipino gender minorities reveal a history of repression and exclusion in the legal institutions that the majority of us never had to fight to get access to," the statement read.

"Our experiences as children encouraged us to dream for ourselves, while our LGBTQI+ children had, and continue, to contend with norms that discourage the exploration and expression of who they were as persons."

According to UP Law, members of the LGBTQI+ community were "inhibited by rules that discourage self-identification."

The institution also quoted the Supreme Court and said that "those with sexual orientations other than the heteronormative, gender identities that are transgender or fluid, or gender expressions that are not the usual manifestation of the dominant and expected cultural binaries, have suffered enough marginalization and discrimination with in our society."

Equality in right, UP Law said, should mean that "everyone, regardless of sexual orientation and gender identity, has full access to services, free form violence, and can found families considered valid in the eyes of the law."

"For when we say... that our business is to teach law in the grand manner, we mean the molding of Filipino lawyers who make it their business to make the lives of LGBTQI+ Filipinos just a bit better everyday. Such is pride in the grand manner. Such is the Pride of the UP College of Law."

—Kaela Malig/MGP, GMA News