Thailand legalises equal marriage in historic first for Southeast Asia

More: https://www.thepinknews.com/2024/06/18/thailand-equal-marriage-south-east-asia/

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Thailand’s senate voted by a wide margin to support a bill legalizing same-sex marriage on Tuesday. This comes after its House of Representatives voted to approve the bill in March with near unanimity. Now, the bill must receive royal endorsement by King Maha Vajiralongkorn before entering into Thailand’s Royal Gazette as law.

The bill is an amendment to section 1448 of Thailand’s Civil and Commercial Code, which currently stipulates that marriage takes place between a “man and a woman.” The amendment uses gender-neutral language to allow for the possibility of recognizing same-sex marriages.

The legalization of same-sex marriage is no surprise in Thailand, where public opinion is squarely in support of it. A 2023 Pew Research Center study found that 60 percent of Thais support same-sex marriage and only 30 percent opposed it. Nonetheless, progress on the issue has been slow. In 2021, Thailand’s Constitutional Court found that section 1448 in its current was constitutional, pushing the Thai government to change the law itself; nevertheless, it took nearly two years until 2023 for Thailand’s cabinet to approve the bill legalizing same-sex marriage. Regardless of the delay, Thailand will now be the first country in Southeast Asia, and only the third in Asia, to allow same-sex marriage.

Even if the king were to deny the bill royal assent, which would be an abnormal measure, section 146 of Thailand’s Constitution states that the National Assembly may override that refusal with the support of a two-thirds majority. Given the bill’s near-unanimous support, it would likely overcome a veto.

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