Planting the rainbow flag firmly in Thailand | East Asia Forum

Thailand’s House of Representatives overwhelmingly approved a marriage equality bill in March 2024. Adopted by the Thai Senate in June, this law paves the way for the legalisation of same-sex marriage, likely by the end of 2024. Thailand will become the first country in Southeast Asia — and the third in Asia — to legally recognise same-sex marriage.

Thailand is seizing the opportunity to close a substantial gap between its storied reputation as a ‘gay paradise’ and the experiences of many Thai LGBTQ+ people.

Thailand’s culture of tolerance is often misread as a panacea for LGBTQ+ rights and inclusion. Many foreign tourists and migrants alike enjoy the experience of not feeling judged or forced to navigate their sexual orientation while traveling or living with a same-sex partner. This experience spans across everyday activities from hotel check-ins to company picnics.

Yet tolerance of sexual and gender diversity has not been consistent across Thai society. And, importantly, tolerance is not the same as inclusion.

Two published reviews of research and non-governmental organisation reports on Thai LGBTQ+ people’s lived experiences reveal that LGBTQ+ Thais suffer exclusion in various domains. This exclusion often begins in schools, where anti-LGBTQ+ bullying is pervasive and students are largely unable to wear uniforms that align with their self-identified gender. Troubling rates of anti-LGBTQ+ discrimination have also been documented across workplaces and healthcare settings. At home, many LGBTQ+ Thais face ostracism or, for some, outright rejection from their families. Responding to familial and social pressures — often to protect parents’ social image — LGBTQ+ Thais often carefully self-monitor to avoid disclosing their sexual or gender identity.

From this vantage point, the deep significance of marriage equality for Thai society becomes evident. The road to full inclusion for LGBTQ+ people in Thailand is still long. But marriage equality —approved in concert with equal rights to inherit property, consent to medical treatment for partners, benefit from marital tax savings and adopt children — carries enormous social and cultural significance.

Legal recognition in the realm of the family plants the rainbow flag deeply in Thai soil. The deep cultural significance of LGBTQ+ inclusion in the family domain could help to catalyse LGBTQ+ inclusion in Thailand across other key aspects of life. Just as LGBTQ+ people merit dignity and equality in family life, they should be afforded dignity and equality in schools, the workplace, the healthcare system and the political system, including open representation in parliament.

The legalisation of same-sex marriage in Thailand also carries significance for the rest of Asia. Importantly, marriage equality in Thailand — along with other recent developments in Asia — demonstrates that legal protections for same-sex couples are not a uniquely Western phenomenon.

In 2019, Taiwan became the first jurisdiction in Asia to legalise same-sex marriage. In 2023, Nepal’s Supreme Court issued an interim order directing the government to register same-sex marriages. Also in 2023, Hong Kong’s highest court ordered the government to develop an alternative recognition system for same-sex couples, such as civil unions or civil partnerships. In July 2024, South Korea’s Supreme Court recognised rights for same-sex couples, holding that the state must provide health insurance for a gay man’s partner. Meanwhile, as litigation for same-sex marriage continues in Japan, local and prefectural governments have taken the initiative to grant partnership certificates to same-sex couples.

Opponents of LGBTQ+ rights in Asia often portray sexual and gender minority rights as cultural elements from the West that Asian societies ought not copy. But Thailand has not simply been copying the West. In fact, in significant ways, Thailand has been ahead of its Western counterparts.

Thailand decriminalised consensual same-sex intimacy in 1956 — a law that had seen no actual prosecutions previously — decades before major Western countries. It was only in 1981 that the European Court of Human Rights ruled against the United Kingdom’s criminalisation of same-sex intimacy. The US Supreme Court’s landmark case decriminalising sodomy did not occur until 2003.

In the last half decade, in response to concerted advocacy, Thailand’s Ministry of Education has taken steps towards incorporating positive representations of sexual and gender diversity into elementary and secondary school curriculums. In striking contrast, many US states have moved in the opposite direction, enacting ‘Don’t Say Gay’ laws to prohibit the representation of sexual and gender diversity in school curriculums.

Situating Thailand’s marriage equality law within the country’s own history of law and policy reforms, it becomes apparent that marriage equality in Thailand amounts to much more than copying the West. Marriage equality in Thailand is a potent antidote to claims that LGBTQ+ rights do not belong in Asia.

Now the task remains for Thailand to cultivate and strengthen the roots of LGBTQ+ inclusion established with same-sex marriage. Its next steps should include expanding legal protections — ​including passing a gender recognition law — and deepening social integration in education, economic affairs, healthcare and politics to achieve the full inclusion of LGBTQ+ people.

Peter A Newman is Professor at the Factor-Inwentash Faculty of Social Work, University of Toronto and lead researcher of MFARR-Asia.

Holning Lau is Willie Person Mangum Distinguished Professor of Law at the University of North Carolina School of Law.