Hundreds of LGBTQ couples in Thailand got married Thursday as the country’s landmark marriage equality law came into effect. Thailand is the first country or region in South East Asia to legalize same-sex marriage, and the third in Asia after Taiwan and Nepal.
Over 100 couples were married Thursday in a mass ceremony at a mall in central Bangkok.
“We’re so happy that Thai people here — now they can express their love in public and they can be accepted worldwide,” Ruchaya Nillikan, 45, who was married at the ceremony, told CBS News’ partner network BBC News. “That means the world to us… We had to fight a lot to have today.”
One couple getting married said they had waited 13 years to do so, while another said they’d been waiting 17 years.
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“Every love is the same, every love is the same inside,” Porsch Apiwatsayree told broadcaster Sky News. He and his partner got engaged 11 years ago.
“Today I feel particularly excited that we will have the law to protect both of us,” Chanatip Sirihirunchai told the BBC.
“Our next official plan is to change my paperwork, because I have him listed down as my brother. Now I can officially call him my spouse,” Sirihirunchai’s new spouse Pisit told the British network.
“I want Thailand to be a country that inspires our neighbors in ASEAN to open the door to freedom for all humanity,” newly married Setthapas Na Thalang, 43, told the BBC.
Thailand has long been seen as more accepting of LGBTQ people than neighboring countries. In June last year, its senate passed the landmark marriage equality bill. The bill changed gender-specific terms in Thailand’s marriage laws to gender-neutral ones, The Guardian newspaper reported.
On Thursday, activists lauded the new marriage law as a good first step, but said other reforms were necessary to offer better protections to LGBTQ couples. Mookdapa Yangyuenpradorn, a campaigner with the group Fortify Rights, told The Guardian that changes were still needed to the country’s civil and commercial codes.
“In the eyes of the law biological parents are still recognized [in terms of] a man as a father and a woman as a mother,” Yangyuenpradorn said, meaning in a same-sex couple, one parent would have no legal connection to their child.
