The lesbian, gay, bisexual, transgender and queer (LGBTQ) people in the Philippines are generally accepted in Filipino society, and it has been ranked among the most gay-friendly countries in Asia.

The babaylans are typically female spiritual leaders, priests, or shamans in native communities, whose position can also be taken by males who crossed genders, and were called asog, among many names.

[9] Effeminate people, together with the weak, were handled gently during pre-colonial inter-tribal raids (mangayaw) on enemy settlements.

Prior to the introduction of Islam to the archipelago and the subsequent colonization by Spain and other European Christians, the region that would become the Philippines was inhabited largely by tribes and larger feudal states that practiced anito animism and Hindu-Buddhist polytheism.

[20][22] According to the scholar and linguist Jean-Paul Potet (2017), there is no information regarding the gender of Bathala in the early Spanish accounts of the Tagalog religion.

In a similar epic, the female binukot Matan-ayon, in search of her husband Labaw Donggon, sailed the stormy seas using the golden ship Hulinday together with her less powerful brother-in-law Paubari.

Matan-ayon then has a conversation with the supreme goddess Laonsina about why the men are fighting, and they agree to sit back and watch them if they truly are seeking death.

Some lesbians (butch and femme) use the words magic or shunggril to refer to themselves;[26] paminta describes masculine gay men.

Neutral slang terms for gay men include "billy boy", badette, "badaf" and bading.

[31] However, on 8 April 2010, the Supreme Court of the Philippines overturned COMELEC's decision and allowed Ladlad to participate in the May 2010 elections.

The SOGIE Bill penalizes the following acts: Swardspeak, or "gay lingo", is cant or argot derived from Taglish (Tagalog-English pidgin) and is used by the Filipino LGBT community.

[33] It uses elements of Tagalog, English, Spanish and Japanese, celebrities' names and trademarked brands, giving them new meanings in different contexts.

[37] Transnational networks such as LGBT non-government organizations allow connected brokers in the Philippines to widely adopt goals and strategies that are cross-culturally recognizable.

Goals and tactics used in the Philippines such as emphasis on "sexual orientation" and "gender identity" as a distinct part of the self, the idea of being "out", and pursuit of rights-based remedies are hallmarks of transnational LGBT politics.

One mobilization was Ladlad's "immoRALLY" in front of the COMELEC office in Manila, two weeks after the rejection of their petition for party-list accreditation in the 2010 elections.

The protest rally was held after COMELEC rejected the petition based on moral grounds, claiming that the LGBT people are not immoral.

The event brought together national organizations such as Babaylan, Task Force Pride, and the Akbayan party-list to protest the charge against the LGBTs.

[42] Perci Cendaña who was the first openly gay person to sit on the UP Diliman University Student Council was subsequently elected as member of the House of Representatives after Akbayan was proclaimed as the Commission on Elections proclaimed it as a winner after the Supreme Court of the Philippines upheld the COMELEC Resolution which revoked the party-list's registration of An Waray.

[47] The Communist Party of the Philippines, a Marxist-Leninist-Maoist political organization, states that it has recognized same-sex relationships within its membership since 1998.

[48] The Philippine media and show business scene—encompassing film, radio, and television—is a vital part of LGBT culture in terms of representation.

In 2004, the Republic of the Philippines Movie and Television Review and Classification Board (MTRCB) disseminated a memorandum calling homosexual relationships—particularly lesbian relationships—an "abnormality of human nature",[49] discouraging producers from broadcasting any sort of portrayals that promoted these relationships.

[50] The following teleseries are recent portrayals of femme-to-femme lesbian relationships in the Philippines: Die Beautiful, a 2016 comedy-drama narrating the life (and death) of a transgender beauty queen, was entered into the 2016 Metro Manila Film Festival and won two awards at the Tokyo International Film Festival in 2016.

It is in this competition that all manner of gays, men or women, as well as transgender and bisexuals are eligible to enter, granted that they first meet the qualifications/requirements of the pageant.

For example, in 2013, at the 9th Cinemalaya Philippine Independent Film Festival awards, transgender woman Mimi Juareza was still considered under the "male" category as Best Actor and referred to with the pronoun "he".

On 24 June that year, members and supporters of the LGBT Community gathered at Plaza de los Alcaldes, Marikina to begin the 2017 Metro Manila Pride March.