## Love and Politics: How LGBTQI Couples are Navigating the 2025 Campaign Season Together
On a warm May evening in Quezon City, partners Ivan and Leandro sit side-by-side, rainbow pins glinting softly on their collars as they scroll through the latest campaign headlines. In 2025, love and politics are inextricably entwined for LGBTQI couples across the Philippines and abroad, especially when each headline feels like it’s written with their very existence in the balance.
This year’s campaign season is freighted with a heavy sense of urgency. Across the United States, right-wing projects like the Heritage Foundation’s Project 2025 have stoked anxiety, as their sweeping policy proposals threaten to roll back decades of hard-fought LGBTQI rights, from same-sex marriage protections to non-discrimination laws. Meanwhile, here at home, every new legislative debate on SOGIE equality or anti-discrimination is watched with bated breath. It’s a political climate that demands resilience, creativity, and a fierce sense of togetherness, especially for couples whose very relationship is politicized.
For couples like Ivan and Leandro, political engagement has become a shared love language.
> “We used to keep our activism separate, me at rallies, him signing petitions,” Ivan shares, fingers entwined with Leandro’s. “But now, we do everything together. Pride marches, voter registration drives, even movie nights where we invite friends to talk about issues. It’s us against the world, or at least against the policies trying to erase us.”
But the campaign season is not only about defense. It’s also about joy, hope, and building community. Across Metro Manila and in digital spaces from Cebu to California, queer couples are finding ways to turn anxiety into action, and action into connection. For some, that means volunteering as a pair for pro-equality candidates, their stories and faces front and center in campaign materials. For others, it’s joining online forums, sharing resources about pending anti-LGBTQI bills, or simply checking in on friends whose mental health is battered by relentless headlines.
Of course, not every couple agrees on tactics or even on candidates. Negotiating political differences within relationships has become as important as negotiating chores or budgets. But many say these conversations, while tough, strengthen their bond.
> “It’s scary, honestly,” admits Jessa, a lesbian educator from Davao, whose partner is less publicly out. “But sharing our fears and hopes, planning how we’ll vote, how we’ll support each other, this is what makes us a team.”
In a season where the personal is undeniably political, LGBTQI couples are modeling the same resilience and tenderness that has always defined the community. Campaigns may try to divide, but every day, queer love finds new ways to hold fast and shine, even in the storm.
How are you and your loved ones navigating this political season? Share your story below, because every voice, and every heartbeat, matters.
