Hong Kong’s high court May 30 struck down anti-gay laws that targeted gay and bisexual men as unconstitutional, but at the same time, the city is upholding a ban on same-sex marriage.
Judge Thomas Au ruled the anti-sodomy and buggery laws were unconstitutional because they didn’t apply to heterosexual couples or to female couples.
“These provisions are inconsistent with the right to equality … and discriminatory in nature. They are unconstitutional and should be struck down,” he wrote in his judgment.
Government lawyer Stewart Wong argued to the court that marriage would be “diluted and diminished” and “no longer special” if same-sex couples were granted the right, according to the Straits Times.
Even same-sex unions would “undermine the traditional institution of marriage and the family constituted by such a marriage,” he told the court.
Last year, the court granted a spousal visa to a married lesbian binational couple.
Two men have filed a case arguing that Hong Kong’s ban on same-sex marriage is unconstitutional.
Hong Kong decriminalized homosexuality in 1991, but four laws that criminalized sex between men remained on the books. (There wasn’t a law outlawing same-sex relationships between women.)
Published by the Bay Area Reporter.
