In 1994, Open Table Metropolitan Community Church (Open Table MCC) and the Progressive Organization of Gays in the Philippines (Progay) would lead a group of 50 to 60 people from the intersection of EDSA and Quezon Avenue to the Quezon City Memorial Circle. It would make the Philippines the first nation to demonstrate a Pride march in all of Asia.
Thirty-one years after Stonewall Manila took place in Quezon City, Bahaghari, the national alliance of LGBTQIA+ advocates, would lead another historic Pride event—the first-ever Stonewall Philippines.
The Stonewall Uprising
The initiative, of course, commemorates the 1969 Stonewall uprising in New York City. Stonewall was an accumulation of the tension rising between New York City police and members of the LGBTQ+ community who frequented Stonewall Inn in Lower Manhattan.
The Stonewall Inn was particularly popular among low-income sexual minorities. It was a gay bar home to drag queens, the trans community, and many individuals who were unhoused. While police raids were not uncommon among gay bars, they usually would not occur when the party was in full swing.
Typically, police raids would take place on weeknights before the crowds pour in, but the raid that would incite the Stonewall uprising happened on an early Saturday morning. Though it wouldn’t be the first time members of the LGBTQ+ community would resist oppressive forces, the Stonewall uprising would mark a historic event for the fight toward gender equality.
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The events of Stonewall are often referred to as “riots,” but many Stonewall veterans resist the term. A riot suggests unreasonable unruliness and violence, a term that has been used by law enforcement to justify their force.
Stormé DeLarverie, known as the butch lesbian whose confrontation with the police, according to several eye-witnesses, led the charge of the Stonewall uprising, insisted that it wasn’t a riot. “It was a rebellion, it was an uprising, it was a civil rights disobedience–it wasn’t no damn riot,” they said.
Demands of the LGBTQIA+ Community
In Manila, 56 years later, queer Filipinos would maintain the spirit of rightful protest. We are living in what is arguably the best time it has ever been for gay people in the Philippines, and yet, the conditions are far from just. In a time when queerness has been co-opted by large corporations, Stonewall Philippines is a reminder that Pride will always belong to the people on the ground.
On June 26, hundreds of people gathered to demand the passing of the SOGIESC Equality Bill and the continuing cry for justice for Jennifer Laude, who was a trans woman brutally murdered in 2014 by a Lance Corporal in the U.S. Marine Corps, Joseph Scott Pemberton.
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Pemberton was pardoned by Duterte in 2020 after only serving a little over half of his ten-year sentence. It would be a devastating decision for Laude’s family and members of the queer community in the Philippines, who would see Duterte’s act as an exemplification of the ways in which queer and trans people remain subjected to subhuman atrocities.
For the organizers of Stonewall Philippines, the passing of the SOGIESC Equality bill is not enough without further economic and political reform. Bahaghari’s chairperson and founder of Stonewall Philippines, spoke out against the Marcos administration, stating, “Three years into Marcos Jr.’s presidency, the SOGIESC Equality bill continues to languish. Pro-people reforms also remain stalled, including the proposed minimum wage hike to P1,200/day. Instead, Marcos Jr. has prioritized anti-people policies, including raising taxes on the poor while providing tax incentives for the rich, and expanding US EDCA military sites in the Philippines,” they said.
Pride is intersectional
Stonewall Philippines recognizes that defending the LGBTQ+ community from injustice goes hand in hand with defending every marginalized community in the Philippines, especially rural sectors. Pride is not just the right to celebrate one’s sexual orientation, but the call to stand by one another as part of a collective struggle.
Rural Women Advocates (RUWA), a volunteer organization advocating for women’s rights and land reform, released a statement on Instagram expressing solidarity with Stonewall Philippines. “We demand genuine liberation over tokenism, asserting that true equality cannot be separated from the fight for national sovereignty,” they wrote.
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Pride is not just pro-LGBTQ+, it must also be anti-imperialism and anti-genocide. Stonewall Philippines marched at the Mendiola Peace Arch to fight for genuine liberation, and condemn the US’ bombing of Iran and the ongoing genocide of Palestinians.
RUWA’s continued statement, reads “There is no SOGIESC equality in a world wherein a US-sanctioned genocide bombs women, children, and queer persons before they may even choose whom or how to love.”
The gathering on June 26 may have been the first Stonewall Philippines, but it is rooted in a deep historical context. In the words of Marsha P. Johnson, “No pride for some of us without liberation for all of us.”
