Gay Guide to Manila
Asia's first Pride march happened here. On 26 June 1994, thirty-odd people from the Progressive Organization of Gays and the Metropolitan Community Church walked through Quezon City to mark the twenty-fifth anniversary of Stonewall. They called it Stonewall Manila. Nothing like it had been held anywhere else on the continent.
Thirty years on, the law has not caught up. The SOGIE Equality Bill, a national ban on discrimination by sexual orientation and gender identity, was first filed in 2000. It has passed the House of Representatives repeatedly and died in the Senate every time. Some cities, Quezon City among them, have passed their own ordinances instead. Being gay has never been criminalized in the Philippines, but that is not the same as being protected, and the gap is the thing to understand before you arrive.
Malate was the center of gay Manila from the 1980s, along Orosa and Nakpil streets south of Remedios Circle. It has faded. The bars that made it are mostly gone and the guides that still send you there are out of date.
What replaced it is scattered rather than concentrated. Poblacion in Makati holds the densest cluster of bars worth a night. O Bar out in Ortigas is the landmark drag venue and draws crowds from across the metro. Quezon City, Cubao and Pasig each have their own rooms.
Metro Manila Pride in June is among the largest in Southeast Asia and still carries the protest register the 1994 march set.