Sen. Imee Marcos has urged President Rodrigo Duterte to certify the anti-discrimination bill as urgent to “appease” the LGBT community following his grant of absolute pardon for a US soldier who brutalized and murdered a Filipina transwoman.
On Monday, Duterte allowed the release of US Marine homicide convict Joseph Scott Pemberton who killed Jennifer Laude in a motel in Olongapo in 2014.
Criticisms were quick to flow after the president issued the unprovoked pardon.
“The outcry against Pemberton’s pardon despite the horrific killing of transgender Jennifer Laude will never be fully appeased until the bills on SOGIE (sexual orientation, gender identity and expression) are passed by Congress and signed into law,” Marcos said in a statement.
“Now it behooves us to guarantee that violence against the LGBT+ community and other victims of discrimination is never repeated,” she said.
The SOGIE bill – which penalizes those who would discriminate on the basis of Sexual Orientation or Gender Identity or Expression – was not passed in the 17th Congress.
While it has been refiled in the 18th Congress, the Senate has yet to tackle the anti-discrimination bill.
