Ferdinand R. Marcos Jr., a.k.a. BBM, joined the Pride bandwagon with a message of support for the LGBTQIA+ community as it celebrates Pride this June.
Marcos, the son and namesake of the late dictator Ferdinand E. Marcos Sr., claimed that Pride Month “honors the courage of those who refused to be excluded or denied their rightful place in society. It reminds us that the freedoms and recognition enjoyed today were not freely given, they were won through struggle, sacrifice, and the belief that every person deserves dignity.”
Marcos – like all the past Philippine presidents – has yet to declare urgent the need to pass a national law that will protect the human rights of all LGBTQIA+ Filipinos. An anti-discrimination has been pending in Congress for over 20 years already.
His predecessor, ex-president Rodrigo R. Duterte signed Executive Order No. 100 s. 2019 to institutionalize the government’s Diversity and Inclusion Program (DIP), which serves as a national initiative to consolidate efforts and enforce laws, rules, and issuances against discrimination, including of LGBTQIA+ Filipinos.
The only pro-LGBTQIA+ effort done by Marcos was when he issued EO 51 s. 2023 in 2023 to amend EO 100 s. 2019 to further strengthen the DIP, reconstituting the Inter-Agency Committee on Diversity and Inclusion and establishing the Special Committee on Lesbian, Gay, Bisexual, Transgender, Queer, Intersex, and Asexual (LGBTQIA+) Affairs.
It is worth stressing that these Executive Orders are not yet being implemented.
And yet Marcos claims that the LGBTQIA+ community “has long helped shape our country’s progress through its talent, service, and leadership. To overlook these contributions is to deny an essential part of the Filipino story. Let this observance send a clear message: no Filipino should ever be made to feel invisible in the country they help build.”
Those in leadership positions in the LGBTQIA+ community in the Philippines are divided on Marcos’s message, many opting to stay mum, while there are others who used to claim “Never Again!” to a Marcos in Malacañán Palace now his enablers, and still others trying to see the positive in the statement, particularly since – as the Philippines helms this 2026 the Association of Southeast Asian Nations (ASEAN) – he is the first to state his support of the LGBTQIA+ community, even if only in words and not in policies.
