A bird that wants to fly is not sinful. It is not broken or confused. It is simply alive. Flight is not a rebellion; it is instinct. Wings are not a protest; they are anatomy. Yet put that bird in a cage long enough and something darker happens—not to the bird, but to the jailer. The jailer begins to rewrite reality. The cage becomes protection. The bars become love. The blindfold becomes morality. The sky is renamed dangerous, the wind is called temptation, and flying is condemned as arrogance, as immorality, as something demonic. The bird is told that wanting more than the cage is proof that something is wrong with it.
This is how control survives: not by chains alone, but by convincing the thing in the cage that freedom is evil.
This is exactly how KANAN Partylist speaks to the Filipino people today, especially to LGBTQ+ Filipinos. Their message is blunt and cruel: stay inside the bars. Do not love openly. Do not ask for recognition. Do not demand rights. If you do, you are immoral. If you insist, you are demonic. If you refuse to obey, you are unrighteous and un-Filipino. They do not merely reject freedom; they are brainwashing the people that desiring for it is demonic.
KANAN presents itself as ‘Right’—right-wing, righteous, correct. But what it really offers is a blindfold. A politics that tells Filipinos to stop seeing their neighbors as human beings and start seeing them as moral threats. Their own statements make this unmistakable: there is ‘no place’ for same-sex unions and marriage in the Philippines—not now, not in a century, not ever. That is not an opinion open to discussion. That is a declaration of permanent exclusion. It says, clearly and without shame: you will never belong here.
They justify this cruelty with religion. With ‘belief.’ With a rigid brand of conservatism that treats faith not as a personal compass but as a weapon. Under this worldview, LGBTQ+ Filipinos are not just different—they are errors that need correction, stains that must be scrubbed out of public life. Pride Month is branded ‘demonic.’ Love between men is blamed for disease. Commitment ceremonies are mocked as immoral wastes of public money. This is not moral clarity. This is superstition dressed up as politics.
And here is the part KANAN refuses to confront: the science, the research, the facts that destroy their narrative. The World Health Organization removed homosexuality from its list of mental disorders more than three decades ago. The American Psychiatric Association has been unequivocal for years: being gay, lesbian, or bisexual is a normal variation of human sexuality. There is nothing to fix. Nothing to cure. Nothing to correct. When KANAN insists otherwise, they are not defending the truth—they are rejecting it.
What they are selling as conservatism is not about preserving Filipino values. Filipinos have always lived in families that look different from one another. What KANAN promotes is a narrow, imported culture war that demands obedience, not understanding. This is why they openly admire and imitate figures like Charlie Kirk, even hosting events on how to ‘debate like’ him. Debate, in this sense, does not mean dialogue. It means domination. It means talking over people, not listening to them. It means turning human lives into talking points.
Let us stop pretending this is harmless. When a political group repeatedly tells the public that LGBTQ+ people are immoral, dangerous, demonic, or un-Filipino, the result is not healthy debate. The result is stigma, bullying, family rejection, violence, and silence. Studies across countries consistently show that discrimination—especially when justified by religion or politics—directly harms mental health and increases rates of depression, self-harm, and suicide among LGBTQ+ youth. This blood is never on paper, but it is real.
KANAN claims to be pro-family while tearing families apart. Pro-life while suffocating living people. Pro-liberty while denying others the freedom to love, to exist, to be visible. Liberty that only applies to those who conform is not liberty—it is permission granted by those in power. And power built on fear is always afraid of the truth.
Here is the truth they cannot cage: LGBTQ+ Filipinos are not going away. They are not a trend, they are not a Western virus—they are your classmates, your co-workers, your siblings, your children. They are Filipinos. Full stop. No verse, no doctrine, no partylist slogan can erase that.
A nation does not become stronger by building cages. It becomes smaller, meaner, and afraid of its own reflection. And any movement that needs to deny people's humanity to feel righteous has already lost the moral fight.
A bird never forgets the sky. No matter how long it is caged, no matter how tight the blindfold, the body remembers what it was made for. And that is what terrifies those movements who call themselves Righteous and build cages the most—not that the bird will break the bars, but that others will see it lift its wings and remember that they, too, were never meant to crawl.
Written by Ibong Maya, Insight PH
Ibong Maya, Insight PH is a dedicated campus journalist and contributor. Their insightful writing sparks meaningful conversations and keeps the community informed.
