‘SA ILOILO BÁTON KITA’: Iloilo City celebrates ‘virtual’ Pride month

By Joseph B.A. Marzan

For the second year in a row, Iloilo City will forego its annual Pride Month celebrations due to the coronavirus disease 2019 (COVID-19) pandemic, but the city has activities lined up to keep the rainbow spirit alive.

The celebration of Pride Month every June was borne out of commemoration of the June 1969 Stonewall riots in New York City, the precursor to the modern civil rights movements for Lesbian, Gay, Bisexual, and Transgender (LGBT) and other gender diaspora in the United States and around the world.

It is represented by the hoisting of various colored flags representing various Sexual Orientation, Gender Identity, and Gender Expression (SOGIE), with the rainbow flag as a universal symbol.

The Philippines also celebrates Pride Month in June, although without any official national laws to mandate the celebration, through the initiatives of private organizations across the country.

Gab Umadhay, a member of the Iloilo Pride Team and head of the city government’s Office of LGBT Affairs, told Aksyon Radyo Iloilo on Sunday that Pride month is a “continuous push to celebrate for an equal and inclusive society”.

“It is important that we celebrate this because we are thinking about the sacrifices done by the LGBT community to push for an equal, inclusive society. This means that our civil rights are the same as those of straight or cisgendered. The role of June is Pride awareness for all of us, that our community is a community which needs to be supported because we are the communities who are propellers of change and propellers of goodwill for everyone,” Umadhay said.

Last year, the city cancelled its Pride month celebrations due to the COVID-19 pandemic, but according to Umadhay the LGBT Affairs office has activated the community to help in various pandemic relief efforts.

These include preparing food for frontliners under the Uswag Patrol Kitchen, and stitching of reusable face masks, which they were also paid for their services.

Umadhay said they also assisted more than 1,000 members of the LGBT community in the city who have been affected or lost their jobs because of the pandemic with businesses shutting down.

This year, LGBT organizations in communities across the city have also joined Community Pantry and community garden activities.

Umadhay confirmed that Pride celebrations in the city have been cancelled for the second straight year, but the LGBT Affairs office has prepared several activities.

These include putting up rainbow flags in plazas all over the city and in Megaworld Boulevard, weekly vlogs on their official Facebook page, and a webinar on inclusive policies and skills for an inclusive city on June 18.

A highlight of this year’s “virtual” Pride month is the Pass The Brush Challenge, where city residents can show off their best make-up skills through short videos uploaded to social media sites such as Facebook and Tiktok with the hashtag #SaIloiloBatonKita.

“We cancelled the annual Pride March because we want to also be sensitive to the struggles of the community. It’s insensitive to march then spread the virus. We don’t want that to happen. We will march together virtually. Right now, let’s just be alone together,” Umadhay said.

He added that 220 beneficiaries from the beauty sector will receive P5,925 pesos from the Department of Labor and Employment’s Tulong Panghanapbuhay sa Ating Disadvantaged/Displaced Workers (TUPAD) program.

Umadhay reiterated that LGBT community members are not different from cisgendered or “straight” people adding that Pride celebrations are also an opportunity to show that “all humans of diverse SOGIE are the same.”

“We are not different from anyone. We are just the same as you are. We just have more colorful hearts as compared to our cisgender community,” he said.