MANILA - Senate President Vicente Sotto III on Tuesday called the attention of the Department of Education (DepEd) after one of its regional offices issued a memo “calling for the implementation and inclusion in the school calendar the observance & celebration" of LGBT Pride "every month of June.”

“This might cause confusion in young minds. It is integrated with some of the activities of the students from kindergarten to senior high school," Sotto said.

The senator noted that in Memorandum No. 82, observance of LGBT Pride was lumped together with celebrations such as Women’s Month, Breastfeeding Month, Peace Education Month, Children’s Month, and Human Rights Month.

"These are all very good undertakings, pero may sumingit na ganoon bigla, Pride Month," he said.

The senator said "pride is still one of the 7 deadly sins."

“In the book that I wrote many years ago, ‘A Vision for a Drug-free Philippines,’ I wrote that ‘pride is the head of Satan, and humility is his headache,” Sotto said during his interpellation of Sen. Pia Cayetano, sponsor of DepEd’s proposed P525.884-B budget for 2020.

Cayetano clarified that teachers and students alike were not compelled to comply with the issuance, adding that the memorandum is “no longer in effect.”

Sotto previously opposed some provisions of the Sexual Orientation and Gender Identity and Expression (SOGIE) Equality bill, which seeks to protect members of the lesbian, gay, bisexual, transgender and queer (LGBTQ) community from discrimination.

The bill was passed unanimously in the House of Representatives in 2017, but its Senate version has languished in the period of interpellation.