Announcement: Project Equality

Dear friends,

Warm greetings!

For the last ten years, several initiatives have been launched to protect lesbian, gay, bisexual and transgender rights (LGBTs), among them a bill in Congress that seeks to penalize discrimination against Filipino LGBTs. Several campaigns have also been launched to mainstream issues surrounding the LGBT community and to mobilize popular support for LGBT rights.

Certain gains have been achieved through these initiatives, especially in the areas of media advocacy, public awareness, and short-term campaigns. However, the institutionalization of LGBT rights in public policy remains elusive: the Anti-Discrimination Bill is still languishing in Congress, and governmental institutions mandated to protect the human rights of all Filipinos continue to ignore cases of abuse and discrimination against Filipino LGBTs. While different LGBT and human rights organizations have made efforts to mainstream LGBT issues, the climate of stigma and hatred against LGBTs still persists.

A new momentum for LGBT rights is therefore needed, and fresh strategies must be employed to attain deeper gains for the LGBT community. This is the motivation behind Project Equality, an initiative of different LGBT activists and organizations to re-launch the campaign for LGBT rights and to broaden support for LGBT rights.

Project Equality hopes to re-energize the effort to pass the Anti-Discrimination Bill, and at the same time open up opportunities at the local level to introduce ordinances that protect equal rights for all Filipinos. It believes that achieving equality requires more than just one legislation, and shall therefore support other bills and policy proposals that seek to eliminate stigma, remove gender biases, and affirm human rights for all.

Project Equality recognizes that LGBT rights is also a question of political participation, and thus it seeks to mainstream LGBT rights and issues among political parties and voters, in the process helping transform elections and other political processes as platforms for the voiceless. It likewise aims to use legal instruments to achieve short-term remedies to cases of human rights violations against LGBTs and to obtain jurisprudence on major LGBT-related issues.

We hope you and your organization could take part in this new initiative. We wish to invite you to an interest meeting for Project Equality on Saturday, November 22, 2008, at 1 PM at the Conference Room of the Phaltra Building, 139 Matahimik St., U.P. Village, Diliman, Quezon City. We recognize that the struggle for equality would require the support of organizations inside and outside the LGBT community, therefore Project Equality is open to LGBT and non-LGBT individuals and organizations alike. Your participation would be tremendously important and welcome.

For inquiries on Project Equality and for confirmation, please don't hesitate to contact the undersigned (mobile: +639209059727, telefax: +6329316575, and email: jonasbagas@gmail.com) or Benjie Zabala (mobile: +639178960104, tel: +6324336933, or email: benjie.zabala@gmail.com).

Thank you very much!

On behalf of the secretariat

Jonas Bagas