Is Rodrigo Duterte for or against same-sex marriage?
Over the past year, the Philippine president has been inconsistent on the issue, to put it generously.
Yesterday, while speaking at an LGBT event in Davao City yesterday, Duterte said he was for it. This was the position he campaigned with during the 2016 elections.
“I am for same-sex marriage. If that is the trend of the modern times, if that will add to your happiness, who am I,” Duterte said.
The president acknowledged that the laws would have to be changed to give two people of the same gender the right to marry.
“I want same-sex marriage. The problem is, we’ll have to change the law, but we can change the law,” he assured his audience.
But just last March, while addressing the Filipino community in Myanmar, Duterte said he is against same-sex marriage.
“That’s their [the West’s] culture. Do it yourselves [but] this is not allowed in our culture. We are Catholics and there is a Civil Code, which says that you can only marry a woman for me… for a woman to marry a man,” he said.
In the same speech, Duterte said that he plans to have the LGBT community represented in the government’s Presidential Commission for the Urban Poor (PCUP).
“Discuss it among yourselves. Nominate somebody who is honest, hardworking, and I would like to show that any… whether gay or lesbian can always work just like an ordinary human being,” Duterte told the audience.
He said he is giving them until January next year to nominate somebody.
While this offer — his use of the phrase “ordinary human being” notwithstanding — seems like a potentially progressive step toward LGBT equality in the Philippines, the president is also known for using homophobic slurs to insult his critics.
It’s hard to tell if Duterte’s statements on the LGBT community are sincere, but it’s clear that advocates would still have a tough road ahead, even with the support of the president.
Same-sex marriage is a controversial issue in the Philippines, where about 80 percent of the population are Catholics and even divorce remains illegal.
The Catholic Bishops Conference of the Philippines, which fought the Reproductive Health Law while it was pending as a bill in congress for 14 years before it became law, has spoken out against same-sex marriage and urged its followers to oppose it.
