Thailand’s King Finalizes Marriage Equality Bill

Marriage equality is coming to Thailand.

King Maha Vajiralongkorn signed a bill on Sept. 24 to finalize Thailand’s marriage equality law, ending a legislative process that began earlier this year. Thailand’s House of Representatives approved the bill in March, and the Senate passed it in June, sending it to the king.

The Marriage Equality Act will come into force in 120 days, allowing queer couples to marry as early as January.

Thailand is now the third country in Asia — along with Taiwan and Nepal — to extend marriage rights to LGBTQ couples.

The new marriage law also removes gender references to “husband” and “wife” and establishes some adoption and inheritance rights, although some advocates have expressed concerns that it could pose issues over time for LGBTQ adoption because the gender designations of “mother” and “father” have not been replaced with “parent” in the law’s references to family.

Thailand is the latest country to approve marriage laws for queer couples this year. In February, Greece became the first Orthodox Christian country to legalize same-sex marriage. However, that same month, lawmakers in the Czech Republic failed to pass a same-sex marriage law.

In Hong Kong, the momentum around same-sex marriage appears to have died down a year after the city’s government was ordered by the Court of Appeal to develop a legal framework recognizing marriage equality. That has yet to yield results — and the court itself has not approved same-sex marriage, according to CNN, a discouraging sign at a time when mainland China is trying to assert its authority over Hong Kong.