I stumbled upon this article from GMA News Tv about having additional public toilets exclusively for the use of LGBTs. Leo Martinez’s party list group, Alyansa ng Media at Showbiz Inc, pushes that gays and lesbians should have their own toilets with labels “gay male” and “gay female” on it because they experience discrimination whenever they use the usual male and female toilets.

Yes, I agree that discrimination happens whenever a member of the LGBT go inside the usual male and female toilets because of the physical manifestation that they don’t belong there BUT I don’t think that having “gay toilets”, as their group wants to call it, is the solution to eradicate discrimation. I believe that having one only creates separatism to the heterosexual world. The LGBT right that I pursue is the one that will make us LGBTs live harmoniously with the dominant heterosexual world. We need to let heterosexuals not see us as individuals that need special treatments such as this but we want to live in a world wherein gender and sexuality will not matter. We wanted to live in a world wherein our own strengths and capacities will be recognized not because we are LGBTs but because we are human.

It is the mindset of the people that we need to change and not by adding “gay toilets”. Building physical structures won’t change anything. There will still be homophobia. There  will be discrimination.

Thanks Mr. Martinez and to the people involved with Alyansa ng Media at Showbiz for thinking about LGBT rights. We need to attack the root of the problem and not be contented in solving the problem from the surface.