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ResourcesFamily LawMarriage RegistrationSame Sex Marriage in Taiwan and Germany: Could Thailand Be Next?

Same Sex Marriage in Taiwan and Germany: Could Thailand Be Next?

Transcript of the above video:

Today we're going to be discussing some recent developments with respect to same sex marriage and the legalization thereof. Specifically Taiwan, it's been recently reported that the Taiwanese high court has essentially done what the United States Supreme Court did in the Windsor decision where using the fifth amendment the Supreme Court went ahead and made same sex marriage legal in the United States.

Taiwan acted somewhat similarly and stated that restrictions on same sex marriage specifically the restrictions that make up possible marital union only possible between those of a different sex. They have ruled that that situation was in violation of its basic law in Taiwan. Obviously, I don't know the specific details specifically how the reasoning went. But as the result is that the Taiwanese High Court has said that same sex marriage in their country, it's interesting to note that the decision gives two years to the government of Taiwan to go ahead and come up with new legislation in order to bring this decision into legal force, essentially to encode this decision. Failure to create a legislation that will allow for same sex couples to marry in a similar or identical manner to different couples, failure to enact such legislation within two years of the recent decision will result in and automatically just occurring.

So it remains to be seen exactly when and how this is going to be specifically implemented in Taiwan but it's very important on this issue because this is the first jurisdiction in Asia, in East Asia really and any place in Asia that I can think of, and I've done better research in any place I've found that's gone ahead and legalized the practice of same sex marriage. It's recently come to my attention that not only that, Thailand there are activists here in Thailand who are petitioning to go ahead and see if the Thai government will go ahead and change its restrictions on marriage. Presently as of the time of this filming, in Thailand a marriage still must legally occur between a man and a woman although it should be noted Thailand is extremely tolerant to the point of incredibly accepting and welcoming to the LGBT community and I don't think there's anybody who would say that Thailand is anything but a good place for that community for tour, vacationing or living here. This is one of the great jurisdictions with respect to tolerance of different people's lifestyle choices.

That being stated, recently sort of an aftermath of the Taiwan situation, there's been recent talk of bringing a petition to go ahead and change the status of the law with respect to this in Thailand. Specifically, there's been a change.org petition that has reached over 60,000 signatures at the time of this filming or somewhere there about and presumably that petition if it gains enough steam, may be sort of the catalyst to go ahead and see the government here in Thailand perhaps make changes to the relevant laws to allow marriage registration to occur between those of the same sex. Obviously, this would have tremendous knock and effects with respect to marriage regulations as there would be marriage visas associated with that. There would also mean significant changes to things like the state laws and various family law, area's jurisprudence but we're not going to get into all the details of that in this video.

But it's interesting to note that perhaps, Taiwan may have sort of been the cow to kick the bucket that caused the chain of events to occur that perhaps we may see the legalization of this down here in Thailand in the relatively near future.