EXECUTIVE ORDER NO.

209 I THE FAMILY CODE OF THE PHILIPPINES

TITLE I

MARRIAGE

MARRIAGE

Chapter 1. Requisites of Marriage

Article 1. Marriage is a special contract of permanent union between a man and a

woman entered into in accordance with law for the establishment of conjugal and family
life. It is the foundation of the family and an inviolable social institution whose nature,
consequences, and incidents are governed by law and not subject to stipulation, except
that marriage settlements may fix the property relations during the marriage within the
limits provided by this Code.

Art. 2. No marriage shall be valid, unless these essential requisites are present:

(1) Legal capacity of the contracting parties who must be a male and a female

Art. 46. Any of the following circumstances shall constitute fraud referred to in Number 3 of the
preceding Article:

(4) Concealment of drug addiction, habitual alcoholism or homosexuality or lesbianism

existing at the time of the marriage.

LEGAL SEPARATION

Art. 55. A petition for legal separation may be filed on any of the following grounds:

(6) Lesbianism or homosexuality of the respondent;

https://www.officialgazette.gov.ph/1987/07/06/executive-order-no-209-s-1987/

Same-sex marriage in the Philippines

In international law, marriage is stated as a right for all humans, the Philippine
constitution provided a more limited right to marriage. Article (1) and (2) of the
constitution limited marriage for only between a man and a woman. Following this,
Article 46(4) and 55(6) specify that homosexuality and lesbianism are legal grounds for
annulment. However, a petition to invalidate these articles is ongoing in the Supreme
Court (Yuji Vincent Gonzales, 2015).

https://newsinfo.inquirer.net/703260/same-sex-marriage-in-ph-majority-of-filipinos-dont-care
In 2015, House Speaker Feliciano Belmonte Jr. told the media about the impossibility of
same-sex marriage in the Philippines. He based this assumption from the cultural
perspective of the citizens that same sex marriage is against the nature of the Filipino
culture.

The Philippine Constitution could not fortify the urge of the LGBT community to assert
their rights to marry, because the Philippine law is structured to live and embed the
Filipino culture. Furthermore, Belmonte does not even see a strong effort from the
Congress with regards to the passing of the divorce bill, and therefore adding the issue
of same sex marriage would likely be impossible to happen (Diaz, 2016).

https://newsinfo.inquirer.net/701494/speaker-belmonte-same-sex-marriage-law-in-ph-impossible

According to Edi Biado (2015), The Standard, one of the Philippine news media bodies,
commissioned an opinion poll in order to find out the stand of Filipinos on the issue of
same-sex marriage. The opinion resulted to a 70 % of the Filipinos who “strongly
disagree” to legalize same-sex marriage in the country. And the remaining 30% of the
voters expressed their support to allow homosexuals to wed. This result could be
converted to an about 7 out of 10 Filipinos, who opposed such law. This can also be
converted to about 8 in every 10 Filipinos affiliated to the Roman Catholic religion. Thus,
these survey results manifested that the Filipinos are not yet ready to set aside their
traditionalist views to accept marriage equality

https://www.manilastandard.net/?p=182503