Felix, Joanne Marie D.

BSA 1-19

A Position Paper on Same-Sex Marriage

“Marriage is the legally or formally recognized union of two people as partners in a

personal relationship (historically and in some jurisdictions specifically a union between a
man and a woman)”. If you search it on Google and seek for it in other published books, this
will be the most common definition that one may get for the word ‘marriage’. One can easily
identify the discriminating phrase for those of the LGBTQAI+ Community, “specifically a
union between a man and a woman”. Is the community asking for too much? In my opinion,
they are fighting against the oppression they have felt and for the equality that they deserve.
They do not defy the religious freedom, but rather we stand up for the freedom of choice and the
human right that each individual has, they opt for the possibility of helping control the
population and adopt orphans as an alternative, and for the country to be open and fully
understand what the community truly is.

History has been entangled with such cruel tyranny and slavery all over the globe, this
is why today we have the concept of human rights. Marriage is a civil right. But why are the
people of the community being deprived of this freedom when in fact they are humans as well?
Does the union of the third gender cause mass murders? Does it defy anyone’s right to live?
Does it cause wars? No. That’s why even the United Nations Council approve of it, and as a
democratic nation that serves this union, it is also just that we join them in this brigade.

Over the years, Philippines has gained massive population growth with 107.9 million
people this year and not all have been accounted for by the census at this point. And in order
for us to still allot our resources accordingly, we need to contain our population. And same-sex
marriage can be one of the factors in decreasing the population growth for the next years. This
will prevent families into pressuring their children into pro-creating even if they don’t want
to. Unions between the third genders does not only mean validation on their relationship but
also a way of starting a family, and this marriage being legalized by the state validates also
their right into adopting children with no homes.

They say that the country is subjected to extreme and immediate changes, however, as
a millennial, I view it as a change that will bring us one step closer to our cultural identity.
History states that we, the Filipinos, are actually open on homosexuality even before the
Spaniards came—whom labeled us as barbaric and imbeciles—we have our own custom of
honoring the preferred sexuality of another because they are human, and they are one of us. So
if the citizens of this nation would open up and try to understand the third gender more, and
if they stop the mindset of ill thoughts regarding them, perhaps we can build a better nation
for all of us.
Felix, Joanne Marie D.
BSA 1-19

According to Teal Swan, “we do not fear of the unknown, we fear what we think of the
unknown”. Filipinos are armadillos in an analogy, whenever they sense something unusual
they curl into a little ball shutting everything out, sometimes it can be a good thing but
sometimes it can be bad as well. Marriage is a formal and legal union of two hearts that love
each other, for me, this is the best way to put what marriage is. So if Filipinos find this unusual
throughout a few centuries then maybe it is time to unroll from that defensive shell and
recognize the idea of uniting two people regardless of their gender, because loving another, was
never a sin in the first place.