{"id":4417,"date":"2016-06-04T21:22:52","date_gmt":"2016-06-04T21:22:52","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.philippinesentinel.org\/?p=4417"},"modified":"2016-06-04T21:22:52","modified_gmt":"2016-06-04T21:22:52","slug":"philippines-elects-first-transgender-woman-to-congress","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.philippinesentinel.org\/?p=4417","title":{"rendered":"Philippines elects first transgender woman to congress"},"content":{"rendered":"<p><cite><strong>(CNN)<\/strong><\/cite><cite> \u2014<\/cite>Voters have made history in the <a href=\"http:\/\/cnn.com\/2016\/05\/10\/asia\/philippines-election-duterte\/index.html\">Philippines<\/a>, electing their first ever transgender politician to the House of Representatives.<!--more--><\/p>\n<p>Liberal Party candidate <strong>Geraldine Roman<\/strong> trounced her closest rival in the congressional district of Bataan, winning <a href=\"http:\/\/election2016.ppcrv.org\/wall\/localresult.php\" target=\"_blank\">62% of the unofficial vote<\/a> count with 99% of precincts reporting.<\/p>\n<p>Earlier this year, eight-time world boxing champion <a href=\"http:\/\/www.cnn.com\/2016\/02\/16\/sport\/boxing-manny-pacquiao-animals-gay\/\">Manny Pacquiao sparked worldwide condemnation<\/a> and outrage in the Philippines for saying gay people are &#8220;worse than animals.&#8221; He later apologized for the insult, which came during his<a href=\"http:\/\/election2016.ppcrv.org\/wall\/senator.php\" target=\"_blank\"> own bid for a Senate seat.<\/a><\/p>\n<p>Many of the same groups to publicly condemn Pacquiao are now jubilant over Roman&#8217;s achievement.<\/p>\n<p>Filipino LGBT political organization LADLAD was quick to congratulate her, noting the historic significance.<\/p>\n<p>Forty-nine-year-old Roman has been living as a woman for the past two decades and has a male partner.<\/p>\n<p>Not shy to defend LGBT rights, Roman nonetheless downplayed the notion that she was a novelty candidate while campaigning in her northern Philippines district. Her popularity, she insisted, had more to do [with] her policies than her gender.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>(CNN) \u2014Voters have made history in the Philippines, electing their first ever transgender politician to the House of Representatives.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":5,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"ngg_post_thumbnail":0,"footnotes":""},"categories":[49,57],"tags":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.philippinesentinel.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/4417"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.philippinesentinel.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.philippinesentinel.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.philippinesentinel.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/5"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.philippinesentinel.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=4417"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.philippinesentinel.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/4417\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.philippinesentinel.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=4417"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.philippinesentinel.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=4417"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.philippinesentinel.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=4417"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}