The Filipino Freethinkers would like to thank Senator Tito Sotto for his recent cash contribution of Php10,000 to the Reproductive Health Advocacy Network (RHAN) in direct support of women’s rights and pushing for the passage of the Reproductive Health Bill currently pending in both houses of Congress.
The donation was made in his name as his prize for winning the Bigot of the Year Award, recently held at the Filipino Freethinkers’ RSS (Reason, Science & Secularism) Forum in UP-Ayalaland Technohub. The title of Bigot of the Year is awarded through an online poll held on the Freethinkers’ website, where participants vote on who they think is ‘the biggest close-minded douchebag’ in the Philippines. The winner gets the prize money donated directly to a cause they are directly opposed to. The honorable Senator Sotto narrowly beat out a slew of other bigoted nominees, which included
Congressman Pabling Garcia, who claimed at a congressional hearing that members of the organization Catholics4RH could not be real Catholics,
Bishop Teodoro Bacani, who says that same-sex marriages are ‘kadiri’,
Eric Manalang, who led members of Pro Life Philippines in shouting, “You should tell your mother to abort you”, at pro-RH Catholic mothers,
and Rizalito David, who maintains that his striking an RH advocate in the House of Representatives while Congress was in session is a ‘non-issue’.
“I wholeheartedly thank Senator Sotto for his contribution to the cause and congratulate him on his victory”, said Kenneth Keng, Filipino Freethinkers’ RH Advocacy Director. “To be possessed of so much intolerance, prejudice, hypocrisy and callous mean-spiritedness that he managed to beat the other bigots in the running is a real achievement. But I suppose laughing in the face of women who have lost family members through complications in childbirth, sitting right across you in the gallery as you stand behind your privilege podium in the Senate session hall, would just about do it.”
