MANILA, Philippines – A young Filipino lawyer has asked the Philippine Supreme Court (SC) to lift same-sex marriage prohibitions in the country's almost 3-decade-old Family Code.

The lawyer, who identified himself as openly gay in his May 18 petition, argued that limiting civil marriages and the rights that go with such unions to heterosexuals violate the constitutionally guaranteed protection for equal treatment, undue interference to liberty rights, and marital autonomy.

Petitioner Jesus Nicardo Falcis III said the limitations imposed by the 1987 Family Code favoring only opposite-sex marriages repealed the 1949 Civil Code, which never made such a distinction.

His petition was submitted to the High Court a few days before a historic referendum in Ireland approving gay marriage.

"I was happy with the development. It gives me hope that a Catholic country can accept gays as equals in the eyes of the law," he said of the Ireland vote.

"The message it gives me is that people can be rational in delineating between religious views and secular or legal views. That your religion shouldn't be imposed on others," he added.

Same-sex marriage is "of transcendental importance to the nation because of the millions of LGBT (Lesbian, Gay, Bisexual, Transgender) Filipinos all over the country who are deprived from marrying the one they want or the one they love," read the petition.

"Those who pursue same-sex relationships despite the stigma are deprived of the bundle of rights that flow from a legal recognition of a couple’s relationship – visitation and custody rights, property and successional rights, and other privileges accorded to opposite-sex relations," it said.