More than 60 people have been detained at Istanbul Pride where thousands turned up to march amid targeted celebration bans.
On Sunday (25 June), LGBTQ+ activists and allies took to the streets of Istanbul’s Şişli district in defiance of obstacles.
English Bianet reported that the Istanbul Pride Week Committee said over 60 were detained by authorities.
In Türkiye, since 2015, Pride events have been systematically banned in the country, with events such as picnics and film screenings even being targeted with bans during Pride Month.
Despite the ban, a group of activists marched in Şişli district on June 25, 2023 in Istanbul, Türkiye. (Hakan Akgun/ dia images via Getty Images)
“Nils Muižnieks, Amnesty International’s Europe director, said: “As thousands take to the streets of Istanbul and Izmir in defiance, they risk facing tear gas and rubber bullets.
“The authorities should allow LGBTI Pride Marches in Türkiye to go ahead safely and without interference.”
On Twitter, participants of the Pride event spoke out about attending the march in the face of oppression.
“The governor of Istanbul said that ‘any activity that threatens the institution of the family’ would not be allowed, and the police closed Taksim. But LGBTI+s found a way around and did not give up on the march!” one posted.
“Despite all the pressure, thousands of queers marched in Istanbul today. This victory is enough for us. I can cry of happiness,” another tweet read.
A third read: “Our stories of honour are different from each other, but they are also the same. My heart and soul are in Istanbul today. We were, we are, we will be.”
Prior to the arrests, activists gathered in Mıstık Park in Nişantaşı and hung a huge rainbow flag on a multi-storey carpark opposite the green. Passionate speeches were made demanding equality for LGBTQ+ people in the country.
“We carry the anger of the queers who have been subjected to torture by the state and its law enforcement agencies, and we declare that our anger will burn you,” one activist read. “We will not leave our spaces; you will get used to us.”
LGBTQ community members and supporters hold rainbow flags and shout slogans during the unauthorised Pride March in Istanbul, on June 25, 2023. (YASIN AKGUL/AFP via Getty Images)
The speech went on to condemn President Recep Tayyip Erdoğan’s victory speech following his re-election in May, in which he stated: “LGBTI is a poison injected into the institution of the family. It is not possible for us to accept that poison.
“No one can speak against the family.”
Protestors at Istanbul Pride responded by “rejecting” Erdoğan’s anti-LGBTQ+ rhetoric.
“We reject this politics of hatred and denial,” the activist told those gathered. “Despite all the prohibitions, criminalisations, pressures, and attempts to suppress us, we will continue to advocate for a humane life for everyone and persist in democratic living.”
Istanbul Pride has been celebrated since 2003, but from 2015, it has been banned by Turkish authorities. Despite this, activists in different cities across the country – including Mersin, Adana, Ankara and Eskisehir – plan to go ahead with Pride events.
Austrian police have foiled a potential terror attack at Vienna Pride after arresting three suspects with alleged links to Islamic extremism.
Omar Haijawi-Pirchner, from Austria’s State Protection and Intelligence Directorate (DSN), told journalists on Sunday (18 June) that three suspects were arrested on suspicion of plotting a terror attack at the event, according to CNN.
The suspects, aged 14, 17 and 20, are Austrian nationals of Bosnian and Chechen origin and were arrested by Austria’s Cobra special forces ahead of the parade on Saturday.
Vienna Pride, which ran from 1 June to 18, was attended by about 300,000 people this year.
Haijawi-Pirchner said the trio had become radicalised online, developing views in line with ISIS (Islamic State of Iraq and Syria). He did not give details about the planned attack.
The domestic intelligence chief added that police carried out searches on properties in Vienna and lower Austria where they seized illegal weapons.
“In our democratic society, hate and terror have no place,” he said.
State police president Gerhard Pürstl told journalists: “For the LGBTQ community, many Islamic, as well as right-wing, extremists represent an intense enemy, which is clear from the violent crimes that have been committed during events in the past across the world.”
Austria’s Interior Ministry confirmed investigations by the DSN had revealed a number of people were planning an attack.
“The suspects were subsequently tracked down and taken into custody in a co-ordinated attack,” the security agency said, adding that those attending Pride were in no danger.
Austrian chancellor Karl Nehammer tweeted his thanks to investigators for preventing “a possible Islamist attack in Vienna”.
He added: “We must never give in in the fight against radicals and extremists. They are a threat to our democracy and security and must be dealt with severely.”
Vienna’s mayor Michael Ludwig told Austria’s APA news agency that there “was no place for hate and exclusion in Vienna. Our city is colourful and cosmopolitan”.
LGBTQ+ people in Malaysia are under sustained attack from the government, but the next generation is giving hope, says one non-binary person.
Malaysia’s government is cracking down on the LGBTQ+ community. Queer people have faced arrests and forced conversion therapy in what officials term an attempt to stem the “spread of LGBTQ+ culture in society”.
Growing up in the country, Shaf, the musician also known as moreofthem, grew up experiencing a “lot of internalised homophobia” and gender dysphoria.
“I didn’t really feel masculine, I didn’t really feel all that feminine at the same time and I was kind of bouncing back and forth,” Shaf explains.
“And at the time obviously when you’re in that environment like a very strict religious environment, you don’t know how to navigate it, and you don’t really know who to turn to.”
Before moving to the UK for the first time in 2016, 2017, Shaf kind of knew the “idea of being transgender”, but there wasn’t a “lot on display back home”.
The predominantly Muslim country criminalises consensual same-sex sexual intimacy, with punishments ranging from corporal punishment to imprisonment under Sharia Law and British colonial-era civil laws.
The Malaysian government relies on the force of the law to prohibit expression and conduct that it deems outside of heterosexual, cisgender norms. It is one of 13 countries worldwide that explicitly criminalises the gender expression of trans people.
In 2021, Nur Sajat, trans businesswoman and social media personality, was charged with insulting Islam after she attended a religious event three years earlier wearing clothing traditionally considered female attire. This offence can be punishable by imprisonment in Malaysia.
Sajat fled persecution in Malaysia and was arrested in Thailand before she found refuge in Australia.
Shaf says younger generations of people are ‘getting more open and bit more accepting’ of LGBTQ+ identities despite the government denouncing the queer community. (Ben Ashurst)
At the start of the year, Shaf visited Malaysia to see family and friends.
“There are cases where you have to be careful, and yeah, raids can happen,” they say.
However, they were pleased to see that there is a a growing acceptance of queerness among younger generations.
“I’ve seen a lot of people with trans identities, and I have a few friends that are non-binary in Malaysia, and they’re able to navigate Malaysia quite safely for the most part.”
They add: “But they do lack the resources in the sense there’s not a lot of LGBT-friendly clinics back in Malaysia.
“You kind of have to play it safe, and you have to be a bit hush hush about it, which is a shame. That was kind of my experience.”
When Shaf was home with family they “had to be really, really careful” about expressing their identity.
“But with friends for the most part – there are some bad apples with people my age – but for the most part, a lot of people that I encountered that have been the same age and maybe younger, they seem to be getting more open and bit more accepting.
“So I can see that there is some form of progress in Malaysia. I don’t think we’re anywhere close, but I think we are hopefully getting to a stage of working towards it.”
Being from Malaysia, Shaf wants to use their platform, music and identity to “help champion others and give them a voice”. After all, they know the power of visibility first-hand.
Shaf says their eyes were opened when a “really good friend” began transitioning.
It took them until “maybe 2020, 2021” to become comfortable with their own identity.
“I was kind of going back and forth, and I had many discussions with friends.
“I would say to them, ‘I don’t really feel like a man. I don’t really feel like this either. I don’t know what I’m going to do at this moment.’ But then I had a friend that came out at non-binary, and they gave me this strength to kind of breathe.
“I went to basically all the meetings with him and was there for him when no one else was and that was kind of my way of learning about it all.”
British Prime Minister Rishi Sunak has been caught on tape mocking transgender women.
In a leaked video from a June 5 event obtained by U.K.-based LGBTQ+ outlet PinkNews, Sunak can be heard taking a shot at Liberal Democrats leader Ed Davey.
Unlike in the U.S., the British Conservative party has overseen important LGBTQ advancements. But some activists worry the new PM won’t continue this trend.
“Like me, you can probably see that he was trying to convince everybody that women clearly had penises,” the Tory party leader told the crowd of conservative MPs at the event. “You’ll all know that I’m a big fan of everybody studying maths to 18, but it turns out that we need to focus on biology.”
Sunak’s transphobic remark was met with laughter from the crowd, estimated to have included around 100 conservative MPs.
According to Gay Times, the jab at Davey is likely in response to an appearance he made in May on the British radio show LBC. During the interview, Davey called for “a bit more maturity and a bit more compassion” in the “debate” around transgender rights.
Host Nick Ferrari went on to ask Davey whether a woman can have a penis. “I’ve made it really clear that if people—the vast majority of people will have the same gender as their biological sex,” Davey responded. “But a small number won’t.”
“So, a woman can have a penis?” Ferrari pressed.
“Well, quite clearly,” Davey said.
Since PinkNews posted the video, critics have slammed Sunak.
“You wouldn’t make jokes about other marginalized people the way he did about trans people,” the source who provided the video told the outlet. “There was laughter, there were quite a few younger attendees who looked visibly uncomfortable.”
“It is profoundly depressing – this whole ‘othering’ of minorities – pretty much any minority,” said an unnamed senior Tory MP. “Without stopping to think we have equalities legislation for a reason, to stop discrimination against anyone with a protected characteristic – we should be trying to understand and support, not belittle and demonize.”
LGBTQ+ rights activist Peter Tatchell called Sunak’s words “borderline indecent.” The Prime Minister, he said, “refuses to accept that there are women based on biology and women based on gender identity – both equally valid.”
“No minority community should be the butt of a joke,” Nancy Kelley, CEO of U.K. LGBTQ+ rights organization Stonewall told Gay Times. “It is incredibly disappointing that the Prime Minister chose to mock trans people in front of his parliamentary colleagues. This is a far cry from his pledge to govern with compassion and would be unacceptable in any modern workplace. The PM should apologize for his actions.”
“I am appalled by the way our Prime Minister has sought to use one of the most vulnerable groups in our society, who he knows suffers the highest level of hate crime, as a political football,” said Jayne Ozanne, chair of the Ban Conversion Therapy Coalition. “If anyone needs to go back to school it is him, not only to learn about the complexities of biology but also to be reminded of the importance of common decency and respect for all.”
The leaked clip is just the latest example of Sunak’s dismal record on transgender rights.
Even before taking office last year, the U.K.’s first Prime Minister of color essentially aligned himself with so-called “Gender Critical” feminists. During an August 2022 Q&A, he said that transgender women are not women. The following October, he characterized gender-neutral language and trans-inclusive policies as part of “recent trends to erase women.” He promised to release a “manifesto for women’s rights” that would call for banning trans women from women’s restrooms and sports, positions that would likely increase the public harassment and isolation of trans individuals. His party has supported dropping trans people from a proposed national ban on conversion therapy.
In January, the U.K.’s Tory government blocked Scotland’s Gender Recognition Reform bill, which would have made it possible for trans people to update their gender on legal documents. Sunak supported the move to block the bill. Earlier this month, he indicated that he intends to change the U.K.’s Equality Act to ban trans women from single-sex spaces.
A community center that has become a lifeline for lesbian, gay, bisexual and transgender (LGBT) Ukrainians – and hub of humanitarian activity since Russia’s full-scale invasion of Ukraine – was broken into and vandalized on Tuesday. Photos show that the door of the Insight office in the northwestern city of Lutsk was shattered, with broken glass and paper covering the entryway. Activists say no electronics or documents appear to be missing.
Insight is a feminist organization that provides medical care, legal aid, and psychosocial services to queer community members. Since February 2022, the group has housed hundreds of people in three emergency shelters run by LGBT human rights defenders, and, together with the Women’s March volunteer team, distributed more than 25,000 emergency aid parcels.
Ukrainian authorities should conduct a thorough and transparent investigation into the attack in consultation with Insight’s human rights defenders, who have long been targeted for their work. In April 2022, two unidentified assailants teargassed Insight chair Olena Shevchenko on the streets of Lviv while she was delivering humanitarian aid. This followed a 2016 far-right attack on the Equality Festival in Lviv, LGBT defenders being teargassed at Kyiv Pride in 2018, and two attackers physically beating Shevchenko in 2019 while shouting slurs at her.
Despite the clear pattern of harassment, police did not properly investigate last year’s attack. Lviv Regional Police Department #1 formally launched a criminal investigation and Shevchenko underwent a forensic medical examination, but the police neither informed her of the results of the exam nor did they collect her victim statement. In March 2023, Shevchenko’s lawyer sent a motion to police requesting that they collect her overdue statement from the 2022 attack, and in April her lawyer filed a claim to a Lviv court regarding police inaction.
The authorities need to properly investigate the break-in and damage to Insight’s office, as well as other abuses against Ukrainian LGBT human rights defenders. Such incidents might be reduced if the government were to enact comprehensive legislation that protects people from discrimination on the basis of sexual orientation, gender identity, and gender expression.
Estonia’s parliament approved on Tuesday a law to legalise same-sex marriage, making it the first central European country to do so.
Same-sex marriage is legal in much of western Europe but not in central European countries which were once under communist rule and members of the Moscow-led Warsaw Pact alliance but now members of NATO and, largely, the EU.
“My message (to central Europe) is that it’s a difficult fight, but marriage and love is something that you have to promote,” Prime Minister Kaja Kallas [photo] told Reuters after the vote.
55 members of the Riigikogu voted in favor of the measure, while 34 voted against. Going forward, alongside marriage, people will continue to enjoy the right to enter into a registered partnership.
Such a partnership guarantees the right of registered spouses to have a say in decisions pertaining to their partner and to obtain support and benefits as needed. Couples who enter into a registered partnership will also be able to convert their status to marriage in a simplified procedure should they wish to do so.
The proposal also clarifies the Family Law Act’s regulation of parenthood in regards to same-sex couples’ adoption rights. The act is planned to enter into force on January 1, 2024.
Estonia, population 1.4 million, joined the European Union and NATO in 2004.
The space for China’s LGBTQ community just got even smaller.
Founded in 2008, the Beijing LGBT Center had played a prominent role in combating prejudice against sexual and gender minorities in China. On May 15, four days after its 15th anniversary and two days before the International Day Against Homophobia, Biphobia and Transphobia, the center said on its official WeChat account that it was closing because of “force majeure,” which in China often refers to being shut down by the government.
“We were all shocked by the news,” said Marry Yang, a volunteer at the center. “It’s quite sudden. Most people don’t know what happened.”
It is not clear whether the closing of the Beijing LGBT Center, which declined a request for comment, was ordered by officials. The publicity department for Beijing’s Chaoyang district, where the center was, said it was not aware of the situation.
Considered the biggest and most well-established LGBTQ organization in China, the center, also known as Beitong, gave sexual and gender minorities a sense of belonging, supporters said.
“It’s quite shocking because I thought the Beijing LGBT Center has a very perfect policy with all kinds of support,” Yang said. “But even so, they still shut down.”
Jinghua Qian, a Chinese Australian writer who worked as a journalist in China from 2016 to 2018, said the center’s closure was “a huge loss for not only the LGBTIQ+ community in China but for the world.”
“We will be poorer for it,” Qian told NBC News via email. “We will know less, we will understand less, about people and ideas that are quite crucial to understanding China today.”
“LGBTQ+ is viewed as a malign foreign influence that is stopping youth from getting married and having children by the Chinese government,” said Darius Longarino, a senior fellow at the Paul Tsai China Center at Yale Law School who focuses on LGBTQ rights.
Although homosexuality is legal in China and major cities can have thriving LGBTQ social scenes, same-sex marriage and adoption are not allowed and LGBTQ people are not legally protected against discrimination.
LGBTQ people in China say their safe spaces have been squeezed under President Xi Jinping, who has overseen a crackdown on advocacy groups since coming to power a decade ago. The pressure has only intensified under a 2017 law that increased regulation of international nongovernmental organizations, said Stephanie Wang, an assistant professor at St. Lawrence University in New York state who has researched LGBTQ rights in China.
In 2019, Chengdu Milk LGBT Service Center announced that it would cease operations. In 2020, Shanghai Pride, which held China’s only major annual LGBTQ celebration, said it was suspending all activities after 11 years in existence. LGBT Rights Advocacy China, which had led major legal cases, shut down the following year, months after dozens of LGBTQ accounts run by university students were deleted from the WeChat social media platform.
There has also been an increase in government censorship, including a ban on “effeminate” men on TV as well as shows about close male relationships known as “boys’ love” dramas. Last year, an LGBTQ storyline was removed from a version of the American sitcom “Friends” being streamed on the Chinese mainland.
Harvey Zhu, 24, a university student in Beijing who had participated in Beijing LGBT Center activities, said the center’s closing was part of an “irresistible trend” in China.
I know that queers & feminists in China know how to work a loophole, a cat door, a hairline fracture, a whisper, a metaphor, but soon that’s too subtle and quiet to reach the people who need it. A secret handshake can’t replace a lighthouse.”
JINGHUA QIAN, CHINESE AUSTRALIAN WRITER
“You don’t feel surprised because you’ve actually expected it,” he said.
Qian, the Chinese Australian writer, nonetheless expressed disappointment and alarm.
“It’s evidence of how much the government has turned on queer and feminist organizations as enemies of the state, where in the past the relationship between NGOs [nongovernmental organizations] and the state was rocky but occasionally collegial as well,” said Qian, who uses gender-neutral pronouns.
Earlier, after hearing about the closure, they wrote on Twitter that “it just feels so utterly hopeless. I know that queers & feminists in China know how to work a loophole, a cat door, a hairline fracture, a whisper, a metaphor, but soon that’s too subtle and quiet to reach the people who need it. A secret handshake can’t replace a lighthouse.”
‘Homophobic social norms’
Zhu and others say conservative cultural values often keep them from sharing their identities with others.
“I haven’t told my parents about my sexuality because I’m afraid it’s not traditionally acceptable to them,” he said. “Although China is becoming more open to us now, it’s still difficult for sexual minorities to work in state organizations as rights-bearing officials because of traditional homophobic social norms.”
“Because you can’t just be open about your sexuality in there, you don’t know what that would entail,” he added.
Zhu sees a brighter future for sexual and gender minorities in China, albeit one that will take time to appear.
“Right now the upper echelons of the country’s leadership are still conservative older generations,” he said. “But I believe that in another decade or so when more open-minded people take up the role of policymakers, things will change.”
That makes organizations like the Beijing LGBT Center all the more important in the meantime, said Will Hai, founder of a queer group in the Chinese city of Changsha.
“It is especially obvious during the holidays,” Hai said, when single people returning to their hometowns face questions from family members about why they haven’t married and had children.
“I can see that straight people seem to be happy to go home for the [Lunar] New Year or something, but the LGBT group feels very depressed and suffocated,” he said.
“In this case, it is definitely important to have an organization for this kind of public discussion.”
Hai said he wanted to make his organization as meaningful as the Beijing LGBT Center.
“On the other hand, I can’t make it too meaningful,” he said, “because if it is too meaningful it will be censored.”
Sarit Ahmed, an 18-year-old queer Druze woman, died after being shot multiple times while sitting in her car in Northern Israel, in a killing allegedly motivated by her sexual orientation.
Ahmed was found lying in the street near Yarka, with multiple gunshot wounds to her upper body on Friday (9 June), according to Israeli emergency services. After being taken to Galilee Medical Centre in Israel’s Northern District, Ahmed was pronounced dead.
The 18-year-old had previously received death threats from her brothers due to her queer identity. In 2020, Ahmed filed a complaint against two of her brothers, claiming they had made explicit threats on her life.
The two brothers were convicted of threatening her life and jailed for three and four months, while Ahmed was placed in a shelter for at-risk young women.
According to the verdict, her brothers found out that Ahmed was not heterosexual and knew about a relationship she had had which was “contrary to the family’s opinion and what was accepted”.
Tensions and threats reportedly came to head in October 2020, when Ahmed’s eldest brother returned home and took Ahmed’s mobile phone from her. It was on the device that he found information about her sexual orientation.
Walla reported that Ahmed’s eldest brother advised her to “drink poison, it’s better for you”, while the younger brother threatened to stab her “in the stomach with a knife, and then I will go drink beer – as if nothing had happened”.
Ahmed’s phone was confiscated by her father and oldest brother, and she was barred from leaving the house unless accompanied by a family member. This situation lasted for over a month, as outlined in the indictment, until Ahmed ran away and filed a complaint against her brother.
In the brothers’ sentencing, the judge wrote: “I have every hope that after this sentence the parents will find the best way to return their little daughter to the family, to take care of her in a natural way, with understanding and persuasion and not by coercion and threats.”
After a period living in a shelter for her safety, Ahmed decided to live with her sister, but just three weeks ago, she approached police and asked for protection, as she feared for her life once again.
Police have so far not made any arrests and no formal suspects have been identified.
Ahmed’s killing raises questions about the lack of protection for LGBTQ+ Arabs in Israel. During a recent Knesset hearing, it was found that the Welfare Ministry employs only one social worker dedicated to helping LGBTQ+ Arabs, Haaretz reported.
According to Arwa Adam, director of Arab LGBTQ+ organisation Beit Al-Mim, the Social Equality Ministry approved the opening of a shelter for the LGBTQ+ Arab community, but it had not been implemented.
Hila Par, chair of the Association for the LGBT, said: “It is difficult to describe the pain of the murder of the young woman after she received threats on the background of her sexual orientation. It is a sad day for the gay community and the entire Israeli public where such a murder takes place.
“When it comes to a girl who has been threatened in the past because of her sexual orientation, we demand that the police thoroughly investigate the circumstances of the incident,” Parr added. “This harsh reality cannot continue.”
Ahmed was part of the Druze community, sometimes described as a “minority within a minority” of around 120,000 people who form just two per cent of Israel’s population. Druze people practise a form of Ismaili Islam, identifying with the wider community in Lebanon and Syria, and some form of Arab nationalism.
Since the beginning of 2023, the number of murder victims in the Arab community has risen to 93, including seven women and two children.
Palestinian citizens of Israel have long criticised the discrimination they face and police inaction when it comes to crime and violence that disproportionately affects their community.
In April, Israel police commissioner Kobi Shabtai claimed that it is in the “nature” and part of the “mentality” of Arabs to kill each other in a phone conversation with in a phone call with far-right national security minister Itamar Ben Gvir.
“There is nothing that can be done. They kill each other. That is their nature. That is the mentality of the Arabs,” the Times of Israel reported Shabtai as saying.
Ahmed’s death follows the unrelated alleged crime gang-related shooting of five people at a car wash on Thursday (8 June) in the town of Yafa an-Naseriyye.
Elected officials in Russia have proposed a new law that would ban transgender people from accessing gender affirming health services – including voluntary surgeries – while allowing operations on intersex children to be carried out without their consent. The bill also prohibits people from changing their name and gender marker on official documents.
The bill essentially infringes on the rights of both transgender people and intersex children. Consenting transgender adults who seek medical interventions to affirm their gender identity will be barred from those services while children born with variations in their sex characteristics – also known as intersex children – will continue to be subjected to medically unnecessary, nonconsensual surgeries to “normalize” their healthy bodies. These provisions are not only discriminatory but also violate the rights to physical integrity and privacy.
The hypocrisy of not allowing adults to make decisions about their bodies while allowing irreversible, unnecessary, and high-risk operations to be carried out on children is not unique to Russia but rather part of a cynical and exploitative anti-rights tilt politicians around the world are taking.
In recent years, officials in state governments across the United States have introduced dozens of bills that limit gender-affirming care for transgender people while allowing nonconsensual interventions on intersex children. Intersex people are usually described in this legislation as “children with a medically verifiable disorder of sex development,” which is a pejorative term for intersex variations. In Russia, lawmakers are using the phrase “congenital physiological anomalies of sex formation in children,” which carries the same harmful impact.
Deputy Petr Tolstoy said of the bill: “We preserve Russia for posterity, with its cultural and family values, traditional foundations, putting up a barrier to the penetration of Western anti-family ideology.”
This rhetoric is emblematic of President Vladimir Putin’s wholesale rejection of universal human rights. In December 2022, ten months into Russia’s full-scale invasion of Ukraine, the Duma extended the scope of Russia’s harmful “gay propaganda” law forbidding the public portrayal of “non-traditional sexual relations.” Previously focused on young people under 18, the prohibited exposure would now apply to any age group.
Russian politicians are harming transgender and intersex people by continuing to deploy cynical “family values” rhetoric to uphold regressive ideas about gender and sexuality while assaulting informed consent rights for adults and children.
Lawmakers in South Korea have introduced legislation that would extend the right to marry to same-sex couples. This important legislation would finally enshrine the rights of same-sex couples in the country.
The bill would amend the gendered definition of marriage in the country’s civil code, allowing same-sex couples to marry and extending them the same rights and benefits afforded to heterosexual married couples. Meanwhile, the National Assembly is also considering legislation that would create civil partnerships as an alternative to marriage for both same-sex couples and heterosexual couples.
In the absence of partnership recognition, same-sex couples in South Korea are particularly vulnerable to discrimination and rights violations, including discrimination in taxation, inheritance, and family law.
Earlier this year, South Korea’s High Court ruled that denying health insurance benefits to same-sex couples that were provided to heterosexual couples constituted discrimination on the basis of sexual orientation.
South Korea also lacks general legal protections against discrimination based on sexual orientation and gender identity. While comprehensive antidiscrimination legislation is widely popular in South Korea, it has been stymied by legislative inaction and opposition from a small but vocal segment of the population.
Get updates on human rights issues from around the globe. Join our movement today. Have it sent to your inbox. The marriage equality bill comes as lawmakers in other countries in the region are considering more protections for same-sex couples. In 2019, Taiwan became the first country in Asia to legalize marriage equality. Lawmakers in Japan, the Philippines, and Thailand are considering proposals to legally recognize marriages or civil unions for same-sex couples.
There is growing consensus among human rights bodies that states must offer some form of recognition for same-sex relationships to protect their rights. The United Nations Office of the High Commissioner for Human Rights has said that, “States have a positive obligation to provide legal recognition to couples, regardless of sexual orientation, gender identity and sex characteristics, as well as to their children,” and to ensure that benefits traditionally offered to heterosexual married couples are extended without discrimination.
South Korea’s National Assembly should embrace this opportunity to protect the rights of same-sex couples and enact the marriage equality bill into law.
