# LGBTQI Community Urges 2025 Electoral Candidates to Champion Equality Agenda Across Key Sectors
As the 2025 midterm elections approach, the Filipino LGBTQI community is taking proactive steps to ensure their voices are heard in the political arena. On Saturday, May 3, LGBTQI leaders, advocates, and allies gathered in Quezon City to launch the “LGBTQI Community Agenda,” a full platform calling for urgent reforms across multiple sectors of society.
The agenda outlines critical policy actions aimed at creating a more inclusive Philippines, addressing discrimination and inequality in workplaces, schools, healthcare systems, media, and governance. At its core, the document serves as both a roadmap for candidates and a benchmark against which voters can evaluate political platforms.
## Key Policy Demands
The newly launched agenda focuses on several priority areas. In the workplace, advocates are calling for the enforcement of equal opportunity and anti-discrimination policies to protect LGBTQI individuals from employment bias. The education sector is also highlighted, with demands for integration of Sexual Orientation, Gender Identity and Expression, and Sex Characteristics (SOGIESC) awareness in school curricula.
Healthcare reform features prominently in the agenda, with particular emphasis on increasing funding for inclusive healthcare services, especially HIV prevention and treatment programs that serve the community’s specific needs.
The agenda also addresses media responsibility, advocating for greater sensitivity and accurate reporting of LGBTQI-related issues. On the governance front, the community is pushing for strengthened Anti-Discrimination Ordinances and enhanced Gender and Development initiatives at the local level.
Perhaps most significantly, the agenda calls for legal recognition and protection for LGBTQI couples and intersex individuals, addressing a long-standing gap in Philippine law.
## Know Your Rights: Electoral Participation
It’s worth noting that this community mobilization builds upon earlier initiatives. In November 2024, the Commission on Elections (Comelec) partnered with the Philippine Anti-discrimination Alliance of Youth Leaders (PANTAY) through Project Rainbow AGENDA to raise queer awareness for the 2025 elections. This partnership underscored the importance of inclusivity in the democratic process.
As PANTAY National Convener Vince Renzo Liban stated during that partnership launch, “We would also want to be seen as partners in the democratic process and nation building”.
The LGBTQI community’s electoral engagement strategy includes a five-minute video campaign promoting their agenda across social media platforms including Facebook, Instagram, TikTok, and YouTube.
As voters prepare for the 2025 elections, this coordinated push for equality provides a clear framework for evaluating candidates’ commitments to LGBTQI rights and inclusion. The message to political aspirants is unmistakable: the LGBTQI community is organized, engaged, and expects concrete policy commitments toward equality.
