Over the past few months, the Philippine LGBT Hate Crime Watch has compiled records and reports of the violent deaths of LGBT Filipinos from 1996 to the present. As we continue to share these data with fellow LGBT activists and human rights advocates, we have encountered recurring questions, including: How do we know if these acts are hate crimes? What are hate crimes, anyway?

According to Preventing and responding to hate crimes,¹a publication from the Organization for Security and Co-operation in Europe (OSCE) Office for Democratic Institutions and Human Rights, an act can be considered a “hate crime” if it (1) “constitutes an offence under criminal law”; and if (2) “in committing the crime, the perpetrator acts on the basis of prejudice or bias.” Perpetrators of such crimes select their victims because of their negative opinions, intolerance or hatred towards the members of a social group on the basis of any of the following characteristics: race, ethnicity, language, religion, nationality, sexual orientation, gender identity or other status.

Hate crimes are also known as bias crimes. The U.S. Department of Justice Training Guide for Hate Crime Data Collection²underscores the role of bias in the following definition of hate crime: “a criminal offense committed against a person or property which is motivated, in whole or in part, by the offenders’ bias against a race, religion, disability, ethnicity/national origin, or sexual orientation.”

Stonewall UK’s publication, Homophobic hate crime: The Gay British Crime Survey 2008³, presents yet another definition of hate crime taken from the UK’s Association of Chief Police Officers (ACPO). It is: “any hate incident, which constitutes a criminal offence, perceived by the victim or any other person as being motivated by prejudice or hate.” The document further clarifies that “hate incident” is defined as “any incident, which may or may not constitute a criminal offence, which is perceived by the victim or any other person as being motivated by prejudice or hate.”

Unfortunately, our Pilipinas has neither official policies nor rigorous studies on the issue of hate crimes. Prejudice, bias, or hate towards any minority group (such as LGBT Filipinos, Indigenous Filipinos, Filipinos of Foreign Descent, Filipinos from non-major religions) are not at all considered when investigating crimes. The absence of an established mechanism in our country to prevent, identify, or resolve hate crimes does not mean they do not happen. It does mean that, if and when hate crimes happen to members of a minority group, the authorities do not recognize them and deal with them as such.

The alarming number of LGBT Filipinos who have been killed in recent years is strongly indicative that hate crimes may indeed be happening. As of this year alone, twenty-eight LGBT Filipinos have been murdered. Twenty-nine were reported to have been murdered last year. Looking at available reports for the past twenty-five years, we found that 103 LGBT Filipinos have been murdered from 1996 to the present.

The brutalities done to the murdered LGBT Filipinos also suggest that they were victims of hate crime. Thirty-six of the victims were stabbed multiple times. Six were tortured before they were killed. Others were raped, or killed with a blunt object, or suffocated, or dismembered, or burned alive.

It is important to note that hate crimes are not limited to murder. There may be an even greater number of crimes—theft, assault, rape–committed against members of minority groups because of the prejudice, bias, or hate against them.

Now is the time to uncover the truth. We call on our government to conduct a national inquiry on crimes involving victims who were known or perceived to be a member of a minority group, and to investigate the possibility that these crimes were motivated by prejudice.

The Philippine LGBT Hate Crime Watch is thankful to all its members, advisers, and supporters. We are also grateful for Rep. Teddy Casino’s call for a congressional inquiry on the murders recorded in the Watch’s database. That is a start.

But for this advocacy to succeed, we call on all elected officials,  individuals, advocates, and organizations who value human rights above all. People who will do all they can to protect, promote, and fulfill eveyone’s human rights without prejudice, bias, or hate against any sector or group. Despite all that divides us, we must unite so that all of us will live and grow in liberty, equality, and justice.

There is hope that the nature, occurrence, perpetrators, and targets of hate crimes in the Philippines will be better understood. Greater hope still that marginalized and stigmatized sectors of Philippine society will be protected and given justice when victimized. And this hope may come to fruition if all of us work together.

You may download resource materials on hate crime and human rights from this link:

https://skydrive.live.com/redir.aspx?cid=11a3f2713fdfa524&resid=11A3F2713FDFA524%21119

I haven’t been to the past hearings and technical working groups for the anti-discrimination bill. All I know of them is that Rep. Abante (dist 6, Manila) and other conservatives told horrible, horrible lies and stereotypes about us gays. The usual stuff. These mean prudes claim that we’re intrinsically evil, and thus immoral, dangerous to children, destructive to families, yada yada yada. And that passing the bill would only empower us to destroy society itself! Of course they’re dead wrong. We are not intrinsically evil. They are just hateful, irrational, and mean people who are afraid of liberal change and the different.

Back then, this guy Abante was super strong and managed to shoot down the bill. Now, he still is, but not too strong to block its passing to the working group stage. I attended the very last of these working groups, sessions dedicated to deliberating what to change, add or remove from the draft anti-discrimination bill. This one went relatively calm, with brief but infuriating interludes from the resident Filipino and foreign catholic bigots. Previous ones were much more animated because Abante was there to be the loud and uber angry conservative congressman.

Last week’s enemies of liberty was the effeminate, maybe closet gay attorney from the CBCP and that white Republican spokesperson from ALFI—a person whom I think should be deported along with other foreign agents of bigoted beliefs. The police and the military reps were not enemies of liberty during the session. Sure, they were a bit homophobic, espoused a don’t ask, don’t tell-ish policy, but at least they overtly showed willingness to work on passing the bill with minimal changes. Very much unlike the bigots who were only there to make sure the bill gets severely weakened.

The guy from the CBCP said things becoming of an attorney for Catholic Bishops. Homosexuality is something internal, he says. But when someone acts on it, society will frown on it because of “conscientious objection”. That phrase right there can be restated as “objection based on religious grounds”. Opting to use the word conscientious makes it seem that their religious morality is the one true morality, thus making their decisions super right and everyone else wrong. From that belief, the Catholic Church thinks it has the right to be against this bill, code for “No way are we gonna let this pass! Cuz you know, we have faith that God hates gay sex”.

The gentle attorney also retardedly suggested that people and institutions be exempt from the punitive aspects of the bill if the discriminatory acts they did were committed in obeisance to religious beliefs. In obeisance to my beliefs, I rebutted that asinine statement saying that adding such clause to the bill would defeat the purpose of the bill itself. I made it very clear–like some bigshot, in front of that attorney, amidst the reps during the session itself–that the clause would enable people to circumvent justice, even after discriminating gays, as long as they say they did it out of their religion. That little performance earned me praise from none other than Risa herself. *clapping to myself, thankyoubow*

White American bigot, like many Republicans back in the US, was acti’n way evils. He said that passing the bill will: endanger children (because we’re more likely to be pedophiles – WTF!), promote public sex (this guy is insane) and criminalize human relations a. k a. being a practicing bigot. He said these f’d up things with such conviction that even the military and the police joined Risa, Jonas and me in taking this guy down a peg. Long story short, white bigot was a total loser in this session, even the police and military guys think he’s absurd.

I am of a disposition to assassinate guys like white bigot and Abante, because frankly, the world would be much better without them. But I shouldn’t. Because if I do pull it off, it might put gays in a worse light and muddle efforts for gay equality. Anyway, us libs came off that session as victors. It is a wonderful sign that the military and the police are cooperative in the further formulation of the bill. I just hope that they remain that way all throughout the process of passing it. Abante et al can be defeated as long as us libs gain stronger mass support. It’s because guys like him operate on the assumption that gays and their supporters are of such a small number that they can be pushed around. We libs, through more appeals to the masses, just have to prove him wrong. Or maybe we could just challenge them to a series of public debates and pwn their asses.

God, when used in arguments defending conservative morals, is the ultimate bull whip. If God says that X is Y, then it must be Y! Period! At this point, Conservatives hurrah and expect liberals to shut-up and follow suit. If that doesn’t work, they use good ‘ole fear and anger mongering to rile the conservative masses, bully politicians, and push their bigoted agenda as far as they can. But let’s explore this God thing a bit. It’s a way too abused argument weapon to overlook.

Here’s my guess. The concept of morality stuck to us as a way to create the basis of order within human society. It’s likely a result of socialization, transmitted and changed, however gradually, throughout the generations. Conservatives, of course, don’t acknowledge these truths. They assume that morals are God’s will or something.

Lots of these moral laws are both practical and rational. Altruism, communal bonds, and other behaviours that promote cohesion and cooperation are often considered moral as they ensure that society grows in harmony. Murder, theft, rape, selfishness, and violence are things that loads of societies loathe since they make life awful. And of course, these are counter-productive behaviours to societies who want their progeny to thrive. Obviously they’re labelled as immoral.

Practical and rational morals, like the ones I said above can be proven through observation and analysis of what actually happens in the real world. Defenders of these sorts of morals can demonstrate through concrete examples and unbiased study that these value judgments are correct. Preventing selfishness while promoting altruism makes sense since you can’t expect prosperity and economic progress to spread if people don’t know how to share and let go of their greed. But how can you defend moral laws that deem homosexuality, and other non-harmful behaviours, but still considered taboo, as immoral and even harmful? God! That’s how!

All a conservative moralist has to do is to pull up scripture, mix in some bile-filled social commentary, and prodigiously spread the word God around, and then voila, you have yourself classic right-wing punditry against whatever progressive thought out there. The term God is simply a cop-out from a decent rational debate. He (or is it She or It, doesn’t really matter anyway) is just used to scare conservatives and the conservative-ish to follow the old ways.

To avoid this gawdawful mess of conservative morality, it’s best to assess acts/behaviours/ideologies based on why they were acted out, how they were done, and how it affects all that’ll be involved. Take the example of gayness.

A guy or a gal expressing romantic love for their own sex will, at most, make conservatives batshittingly mad–some to the point of bloody violence. Yes it has the potential to break families but that only happens if the non-gay members and/or non-liberal relatives refuse to accept their gay kin. How being gay and being gay with your lover in formal union breaks other people’s families is a mystery to me. And as for corrupting the youth, blah. That assumes being gay is an aberration, but only conservatives think that. Unbiased studies show that it is a natural variant of human sexuality, so I say wholesome knowledge of gayness enlightens the youth, not fuck them up. Besides, every gay stereotype is a result of oppression–from the conservatives!

So, is being gay harmful and therefore immoral? Intrinsically, no. Things only go bad when you mix in prejudice, and it generates harm against the gay person. This in fact points to how conservatism is harmful and immoral since it promotes oppression, limits healthy emotional and psychological development, and contributes to the violation of human rights–with all the anal rules it has.

I think it’s better for conservatives to just outright say that they’re mean and that they hate the different. Because their continued reliance on the term God as an excuse for their bigoted agendas just shows how intellectually weak they are. I bet my knickers that when you ask them to give a secular and rational defence for their point, they’ll give something totally bible-ish or twistedly bigoted instead.