MANILA, Philippines—(UPDATE) The Supreme Court ordered the Commission on Elections on Tuesday to recognize the gay-rights organization Ang Ladlad as a party-list group and to print its name on ballots for the May 10 elections pending a more definitive ruling by the high court on the issue.

The court issued the directive after the tribunal met as a body in the form of a temporary restraining order against a Comelec ruling that disqualified Ang Ladlad from the party-list elections in May.

Deputy Court Administrator Jose Midas Marquez, in a late afternoon news conference, told reporters that Ang Ladlad’s appeal of its disqualification by the Comelec remains pending with the Supreme Court.

He said the Court was simply aware that time was of the essence as the Comelec should soon be printing the names of eligible candidates and party-list groups on the ballots earlier than in the past because of the automation of the May 10 elections which will employ ballot scanning and counting machines.

“If later on the Court finds that Ang Ladlad should be qualified, it might be difficult, if not impossible, to include them on the ballots,” Marquez said.

In a 26-page petition for certiorari filed on Jan. 4, the group represented by Prof. Danton Remoto asked the Supreme Court to nullify the Comelec resolution disqualifying Ang Ladlad from next year’s party-list elections and to compel the commission to add the name of the gay group when ballots are printed stating Jan. 25.

“A cursory perusal of the Comelec thesis reveals that the Commission equated Ladlad's tolerance of the beliefs of those 'differently-oriented' with the petitioner-applicant's purported acts or practice of immorality,” the group said in its petition.

Ang Ladlad said that the Comelec invoked Article 201 of the Revised Penal Code dealing with the glorification of criminals, violence in shows, obscene publications, lustful or pornographic exhibitions to back its conclusion that the group was taking up doctrines contrary to public morals.

“It may not be amiss to say… that homosexuality per se does not fall within the ambit of the penal law. That one's affections towards people of the same sex easily translate to lust and immorality is obviously a non-sequitur,” it added.

Ang Ladlad told the Supreme Court that, carried to the extreme, equating homosexuality with immorality or criminality would make calling another person “bading” or “tibo” a ground for criminal action.

It said the election commissioner who said there were already many homosexuals in Congress “may be exposed to charges of slander by the offended members of Congress whom he forced ‘out of the closet,’ because simply branding them as gays would then possibly constitute a malicious imputation of a crime, vice or defect.”

“Then again, as pop celebrities Piolo Pascual and Sam Milby would have probably realized had they pursued their complaint against showbiz agent Lolit Solis, there is nothing depreciatory in the term ‘gay’ to warrant a conviction for libel,” the group said.

“At least for now, the term should be neutral one,” it added.