User:Taumbahay/Pride March in the Philippines

The first gay and lesbian pride march in the Philippines and the Asian region was launched on 26 June 1994, and the exact place was the Quezon Memorial Circle in Quezon City.

That Pride march was spearheaded by the militant gay activist group Progressive Organization of Gays in the Philippines (ProGay Philippines) and the Metropolitan Community Church (MCC). The two groups met a few months earlier in that year to discuss the holding of the pride march with very limited resources.

Planning

The ProGay Philippines, a new activist group based mostly in campuses, had a few chapters of gay men and transgendered persons living mostly in the city slums of the Metro Manila area. MCC had a sizeable crowd of worshippers who came mostly from Manila. The attendees were invited via word of mouth and phone trees, during a time when there was no internet and only portable pagers were beginning to become popular before the advent of cellphones. Announcements in the media a few days before the march generated a buzz but the interest came too late to mobilize a larger crowd.

The date was chosen by the student activist crowd of Progay to coincide with the 25th anniversary of the Stonewall riots, and in so doing, link up with global commemorations of the anniversary.

The main mobilizers of the pride march were Oscar Atadero, who become president of the Progay organization, Fr. Richard Mickley, the moderator of the MCC church in the Philippines, and Alan Tolosa, who was then deputy-secretary general of the leftist political alliance Bagong Alyansang Makabayan, or BAYAN.

Actual pride activities

The march started with an assembly agit prop action on the corner of Quezon Avenue and E. delos Santos Avenue, around 1:00 p.m. After the crowd got large enough, the two groups decided to start the pride march. The presence of many mass media outlets that covered the pride march doubled the size of the crowd, in all, there may have been 200 participants in the march.

The marchers, mostly composed of gay men and transgendered queens, brandished signs and streamers calling for the respect of human rights based of LGBTs. The major television networks got footage of gay men kissing each other, which may be the first live same-sex kissing covered on national media.

The pride march proceeded from Quezon Avenue and made a semicircular route around the Quezon Memorial Circle. The pride marchers entered the fenced park grounds of the Circle with the intention of making a political rally inside the grounds. However, the organizers encountered a problem that was discovered when park authorities demanded payment for the use of the grounds, which was then managed by a private foundation, headed by the former vice mayor of Quezon City, Atty. Charito Planas. With no funds to pay the fee that the administration demanded, the media people covering the event passed the hat around and succeeded in collecting the required 3,000 pesos. After the amount was paid, the rally was allowed to continue.

The rally commenced with a Catholic style mass celebrated by Fr. Richard Mickley. Speeches were made by gay and lesbian leaders from Progay, Gabriela Lesbian Collective, MCC and HIV/AIDS NGOs.

Cultural, social and political effects

The pride march became significant as a watershed in the Philippine political landscape. The pride march showed for the first time on mainstream media the significance of the lesbian, gay, bisexual, and transgender (LGBT) persons as a political force that can deliver messages on human rights. Most media portrayals before the pride event were mostly limited to stereotyped images and expressions of gay men and transgendered personalities in comic situations, certain professions (in beauty and show business), and accepted social roles. Those social roles include being limited to assisting heterosexuals in managing projects on beautification, the arts, health care, entertainment, and similar minor contributions. The pride march made it possible for LGBTs to be thought of as political actors on their own merit and without supporting or being supported by heterosexuals.

Only weeks after the Pride event, the mass media started producing news segments and entire public affairs programs discussing homosexuality in a more positive light. Compared to the portrayals in the period before this, the new productions featured two sides of the argument, because now the media can rely on gay activists providing either the opposing opinion or the first opinion.

The pride march also produced multiple images of religious concepts that clashed with the mainstream doctrinal thinking of Filipinos about homosexuality being a sin and of homosexuals as lesser children of god. Fr. Richard Mickley, in addressing the issue of sin and homophobia, introduced to the country for the first time the standard MCC theology on a massive scale. The messages were reinforced by the sight of Fr. Mickley dressed in the clothing of Catholic clergy while leading a flock of gay men singing religious hymns in a gay event.

The footage of the 1994 Pride march was used repeatedly by two major television networks in the Philippines for several years.