From Times Live
From flamboyant parades to symbolic same-sex weddings, taboos surrounding homosexuality – once viewed as a “social evil” – are slowly crumbling in Vietnam, but activists say only freedom to marry will bring true equality.
Same-sex couple Tran Ngoc Diem Hang (R) and Le Thuy Linh (2nd R) share a moment during their public wedding as part of a lesbian, gay, bisexual, and transgender (LGBT) event.
Image by: KHAM / REUTERS
In the latest celebration of the small but significant legal gains for the country’s lesbian, gay, bisexual and transgender (LGBT) community, around 300 people joined a colourful bicycle parade through the narrow streets of Hanoi on Sunday.
It was the country’s third – and largest – gay pride event, as increasingly tolerant attitudes gain ground in a nation where conservative Confucian values and traditions still dominate, particularly in rural areas.
Vietnam’s main cities, from the capital Hanoi to southern Sai Gon, have small but vibrant gay night life scenes. And the authoritarian country now finds itself among the most progressive nations in Asia in terms of its approach to sexuality.
In 2012, lawmakers even mulled changing the law to permit same-sex marriage – a move which would have catapulted the Vietnam to the forefront of gay rights in the region – but it stopped short.
Instead, they abolished fines for same-sex wedding parties – symbolic unions that lack full legal recognition.
Emboldened activists are now pressing authorities to revisit the marriage issue.
“We really want Vietnam to fully legalise same-sex marriage… so we can own property and adopt a child together,” Dao Le Duc Nghi, 30, told AFP.
Nghi “married” his partner Nguyen Cong Luan in April at a “happy wedding” which just five months earlier would have likely been broken up by local officials.
“Both sets of parents were there. We had around 200 guests. We informed local authorities and they told us to go ahead,” Nghi told AFP.
But the couple, who run a small restaurant called Pe De Crab Noodles – Pe De means gay in Vietnamese – in southern Binh Phuoc province, say they are hoping for changes which will grant their symbolic union the same legal status as a normal marriage.
“They will legalise same-sex marriage eventually,” Nghi said. “There is no reason not to.”
For now, the government disagrees. It says Vietnam’s conservative rural population is not ready to accept same-sex unions.
“In the last few years there have been big changes in public opinion,” said sociologist Le Quang Binh, adding it was “a big disappointment” that same-sex marriage had not been legalised.
There was a clause in a new family law which would have extended some legal protections to LGBT couples regarding property rights and adoption.
Read the full article from Times Live.
