Religious Bias in Philippines Law Making

Thesis Statement: This paper intends to discuss that morality should not be the basis of creating laws in the Philippines because it is bias on religion, it is against individual choices and it leads to discrimination

INTRO

(1.1) The reliance of laws to religion could be traced back to the ancient period. The mentality of the ancient romans in particular is quite the same with the mentality of the modern Filipinos. They follow the mentality set by their religion because of the fear of the consequences of the afterlife (Edwords, 1985). Hence, not much has changed with how laws are created. Certain house bills slowly progress because of cult mentality which affects laws. For instance, it took ten years before the RH-law has been passed because of the endless arguments that the religious groups has voiced out (RHbill ORG, n.d.). Laws should adapt to the change of the modern era; it should not base its heart on religion, rather, to true equality.

(1.2) There are bills such as the Divorce Bill that have not been approved because of issues on morality. One of the reasons is that most people look at the ethical part of the doing of a person rather than their reasons. People may judge the couple’s virtues and morality before knowing the reason of their separation. Another is that an authority like the Church, from the Catholic religion who dominates a large percentage of the Philippines, will not confirm the Divorce Bill because it is against their teachings. It would be wrong for them, as well as the Catholic religion, to separate a couple who vowed, and was united at the church during their marriage. This is perhaps the reason behind using the bible as a basis for the said morality, since the bible provid...

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...lieves in one’s free will. How is an individual able to do what he or she wants freely if judgements and punishments are awaiting him or her when the act to be done is bad? Clearly, free will is not noticed in those situations.

Aside from those, people have different perspectives. Ethical relativism claims that people from different cultures follow different standards of right and wrong; that everyone differs from following a specific branch of ethics. A person’s action is dependent upon the society where he or she is at; it varies from a culture to another (Timbreza, 2008 in Velasco, 2013).

Hence, morality as a foundation of laws does not equate to equality because it is bias . Similar to what is explained in 4.0, the inequality of same sex marriage is the aftermath of the individual need to follow societal norm on religion that leads to discrimination.