Thailand’s Same-Sex Marriage Law Takes Effect: “All Love Is One”
Hundreds of LGBTQ couples got married in Thailand on Thursday. Thailand is the first country or region in Southeast Asia to legalize same-sex marriage, and the third in Asia after Taiwan and Nepal.
More than 100 couples got married at a shopping mall in central Bangkok on Thursday.
“We are so happy that they are Thai people here – now they can express their love in public and be accepted internationally,” Ruchaya Nilikan, 45, who got married at the ceremony, told BBC News, a CBS news affiliate. “It means the world to us … we had to fight so hard to get today.”
One couple said they waited 13 years to get married, while the other said they waited 17 years.
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“All love is the same, all love is the same inside. He and his partner got married 11 years ago,” Porsche Apiwatsiri told broadcaster Sky News.
Channatip Sirihirunchai told the BBC: “I’m very happy today, especially that we have a law to protect both of us.
“Our next official plan is to change my papers, because he registered me as my brother. Now I can officially call him my husband,” Sirihirunchai’s new spouse Pisit told the British network.
“I want Thailand to be a country that encourages our neighbors Asian Setapas Na Thalang, a 43-year-old newlywed, told the BBC.
Thailand has long been seen as more accepting of LGBT people than neighboring countries. In June of last year, his Senate He passed the historic marriage equality law. The law changes the gender-specific wording in Thailand’s marriage law to be gender-neutral, The Guardian newspaper reported.
On Thursday, activists hailed the new marriage law as a good first step, but said other reforms were needed to better protect LGBTQ couples. Mukdapa Yanguenprador, a campaigner at the Fortify Rights group, told The Guardian that changes still needed to be made to the country’s civil and commercial codes.
“From a legal point of view, the biological parents are still recognized as the father and the woman as the mother,” Yanguenpradoorn said, meaning that in a same-sex couple, one parent has no legal relationship with them. child.