Motorcycle backriding is now allowed—but only for couples

Today, Jul. 9, Interior and Local Government Secretary Eduardo Año announced that motorcycle backriding will be permitted again, given that the driver and passenger are a couple and that a barrier will be put on the motorcycle to separate the two.

“The protective shield should cover past the head. It also has handles attached to its poles, said Año. Both passenger and the rider should still wear face masks and helmets,” reports ABS-CBN. The model for the barrier will be based on the prototype proposed by Bohol governor Arthur Yap, which was approved by the National Task Force.

Año noted that the couples covered are those who are living together, married or not. “Living in the same household, whether they are married, or they are common-law husband and wife or boyfriend and girlfriend but they are living in the same household,” he said. “During random checks, couples may show their IDs as proof that they bear the same surname or address. He said there are so many ways to prove that couples live in the same household,” writes the same ABS-CBN report.

Couples may present identification cards (IDs) as proof,” writes an Inquirer.net report.

As great as this is in terms of giving people more options to mobilize (especially given that more than a hundred MRT workers were revealed to be infected by COVID-19), this seems to mostly apply to straight couples. Queer people in non-heteronormative relationships are not allowed to get married, and the same proof that unmarried straight couples can use to prove they live together don’t always apply to same-sex couples (aka the classic “you’re not a couple, you’re roommates”). 

 

Photo courtesy of Nino Orbeta from Inquirer.net

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Zofiya Acosta: Zofiya, editor, cat parent, and Very Online™️ person, has not had a good night’s sleep since 2016. They love movies and TV and could spend their whole life talking about how 2003’s “Crying Ladies” is the best movie anyone’s ever made.