‘Ang tatay kong Father’

A church posts giant tarps endorsing political candidates listed as “Team Buhay” and rejecting candidates listed as “Team Patay”—and the Supreme Court says it wasn’t political campaigning? And that’s because the speaker is not a candidate but a mere “citizen”!

But if the identity of the speaker is vital, remember that in this case the speaker is actually a church, of the Diocese of Bacolod no less. If the anchor of the Court’s argument is that utterances against reproductive health is political speech protected by the Constitution, then aren’t some entities like organized churches not supposed to utter political speech in the first place? Church buildings enjoy tax exemptions for as long as they are used “actually, directly and exclusively for religious, charitable and educational purposes.” So they’re religious for the purpose of tax exemptions, but secular for the purpose of crossing out names for their flock when it votes? They teach us the story about multiplying loaves of bread, but here they want to have their cake and eat it, too!

So if the Court really wants to uphold the Constitution, whatever happened to “The separation of Church and State shall be inviolable,” the Constitution’s “Declaration of Principles” no less?

In the 2013 elections, the Diocese of Bacolod posted on its church’s grand entrance two huge tarps. One said “Ibasura ang RH Law.” Another listed Team Buhay/Anti-RH candidates marked by a white check mark, and those of Team Patay/Pro-RH against a black background with a red “x”.

The Commission on Elections said the poster exceeded the maximum allowable size, but the Court said: No way, this was an impermissible “content-based” regulation by the Comelec. Several justices disagreed on this point. Justices Antonio Carpio, Arturo Brion and Estela Perlas-Bernabe wrote separate opinions stating: A size requirement has absolutely nothing to do with content.

But the ponente, Justice Marvic Leonen, said it does affect content: Larger fonts are more readable, more words can fit, and readers feel the impact more strongly. By that test, just about every change in font, format, color or design can be considered content-based. If the Court wanted to discard the distinction altogether and abandon its past rulings, it should say so frankly.

Moreover, to say that this wasn’t campaign-related is simply outrageous. The law defines “election campaign” or “partisan political activity” as “an act designed to promote the election or defeat of a particular candidate [for] public office, which shall include [posting] materials designed to support or oppose the election of any candidate.” The anti-RH poster might pass muster (though by a hair, one might say), but what of Team Buhay/Patay? What else in heaven’s name could it be?

Even worse, the law punishes “any head, superior, or administrator of any religious organization … who in any manner influence[s], directly or indirectly, any of his … members or parishioners … to aid, campaign or vote for or against any candidate.”

The Court can very well raise the technicality that the Comelec did not cite the Bacolod clergy for this election crime but rather for the more innocuous maximum-size limits. But this same Court, as Justice Brion brilliantly explains, has boldly set aside just about every technical barrier to its jurisdiction. The case is already moot and academic: Four of seven Team Patay candidates are alive and well in the Senate! Also, the Diocese bypassed the Comelec’s own review mechanisms and went straight to the Supreme Court.

The Court could have easily invoked the Comelec’s constitutional power to regulate “all media of communication or information” during the election period. That’s what it did many years ago to validate the draconian (and now congressionally repealed) ban on televised campaign ads. Yet it would now parse the Constitution and say that that power covered only franchise holders or candidates, not supposedly ordinary citizens. Justice Carpio rightly disagreed, “[o]therwise, all the limitations on election spending and on what constitutes lawful election propaganda would be meaningless,” by the simple token of channeling campaign material through willing accomplices.

The Court would privilege the offending tarps as “satire,” but the real jokes have only just begun. The local faithful immediately listed their “Team Tatay,” or priests who actually exercised their reproductive rights. The impish Inquirer cartoonist lampooned it as “Ang tatay kong Father.” And now, even as we have a church that would intrude into the marital bedroom, we also get a Court that ignores the elephant in the room when it decides this case as if it had nothing to do with the separation of Church and State.