Equality Philippines

It is very heartwarming to note that the 110-year old Civil Service Commission (CSC) of the Philippines made history in late May when it became the first government agency to acknowledge Lesbian Gay Bisexual and Transgender (LGBT) Filipinos particularly those who apply for the Civil Service Examination and explicitly ban any form of discrimination in the handling, verifying and processing of their applications based on gender identity and sexual orientation. The internal memo circulated through all 15 regional offices of the CSC and cascaded to the more than 1 million employees of the Commission can be viewed here . Certainly this memo is ground-breaking and deserves all the praise it can get. It is not only a step in the right direction in the government's promotion of gender equality but as well as of human rights. In a nutshell, the memo affirms the Constitutional principle that all people deserve equal protection in law including in the access of public services. LGBT applica...

"The doctrine of the separation of the Church and State was not enunciated by a king or a president, or by a pope or a bishop, but by our Lord Jesus Himself. While our Lord was still in this world, there were those who wanted to show Him up as a false prophet, so they went to Him and asked whether they should pay the taxes demanded by the Roman government or not. Thereupon Jesus asked them to and Him a coin; upon receiving it, He asked them whose face was it that appeared on the coinl and they answered it was Caesar's. Jesus then said: "Render unto Caeser what is Caesar's and unto God what is God's." [Matt 22:15-22, Mark 12:13-17; Luke 20:20-26] (President Manuel L. Quezon at the Luneta, Manila 17 July 1938) For even more analysis of this issue, visit Sampaloc Toc's Render onto Comelec blog .

My reaction [dumbest reaction, ever of BIG.BAD.EJ ; duh...] to the 9th (and supposedly last) State of the Nation Address (SONA) of Pres. Gloria Macapagal Arroyo, no matter how thorough, detailed, backed up with hard statistics, and seemingly "intellectual" it was from an "economist's" point of view, can be summarized in one text joke I received the same day: Ano ang kaibahan ng FAIRY TALE sa SONA ? Ang FAIRY TALE ay kwentong di totoo na may DUWENDE . Ang SONA , may DUWENDE na nagkukuwento ng di totoo. =)) The country looks so good and progressive based on this 2009 SONA . But why is it that, in reality, it is not? Why is it that the Filipinos, the ultimate end point, do not see nor feel any measure of progress at all? In summary, three things to describe the 9th SONA : Fashion show Retaliation Fake Here's a full transcript of the 9th SONA for reference.