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Thailand’s same-sex marriage law goes into effect: “All love is the same”


Hundreds of LGBTQ couples in Thailand tied the knot on Thursday as a landmark marriage equality law came into force. Thailand is the first country or region in Southeast Asia to legalize same-sex marriage, and the third in Asia after Taiwan and Nepal.

More than 100 couples tied the knot in a mass ceremony at a shopping mall in central Bangkok on Thursday.

“We are very happy that Thai people are here – now they can express their love in public and they can be accepted around the world,” Ruchaya Nillikan, 45, who was married at the ceremony, told CBS News Network BBC News. “It means the world to us … We had to fight a lot for today.”

One couple who got married said they waited 13 years to do so, while another said they waited 17 years.

A Thai LGBTQ couple poses for a photo during the registration of their same-sex marriage event at Siam Paragon, a shopping mall in Bangkok on January 23, 2025.

Peerapon boonyakiat/sopa images/lightrocket/getty


“Every love is the same, every love is the same inside,” Porsch Apiwatsayee told Sky News Broadcaster. He and his partner got engaged 11 years ago.

“I feel particularly excited today that we will have a law to protect us both,” Chanatip Sirihirunchai told the BBC.

“Our next official plan is to change the paperwork, because I have listed him as my brother. Now I can officially call him my spouse,” said the new spouse Pisit Sirihirunchai, the British network said.

“I want Thailand to be a country that inspires our neighbors Asean to open the door to freedom for all mankind,” newly married Settapas Na Thalang (43) told the BBC.

Thailand has long been perceived as more accepting of LGBTQ people than neighboring countries. In June last year, his Senate adopted a landmark bill for marriage equality. The bill changed gender-specific terms in Thailand’s marriage laws to be gender-neutral, the Guardian newspaper reported.

On Thursday, activists praised the new marriage law as a good first step, but said other reforms were needed to offer better protections to LGBTQ couples. Mookdapa Yangyuenpradorn, a campaigner with the group Forrify 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] Man as father and woman as mother,” Yangyuenpradorn said, meaning in a same-sex couple, one parent would have no legal relationship with their child.



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