It has been a reality since January 2025: in Thailand, same-sex couples can now marry and enjoy the same rights and responsibilities as heterosexual couples.
Stefan Mentschel is the head of the Rosa Luxemburg Foundation's regional office in Hanoi, Vietnam.
After the lower house of parliament cleared the way for the conservative populist government’s bill in April 2024, a slim majority in the Senate voted in favour of it. In September, King Maha Vajiralongkorn signed the law, and four months later it went into effect.
Activists describe the legalization of marriage for all as a milestone. Writer Netiwit Chotiphatphaisal, who runs the student publishing company Sam Yan Press in Bangkok, stressed that “the law is welcomed by broad swathes of Thai society”. However, Chotiphatphaisal adds that there is still more to do to ensure the safety of queer people, which is to say people whose sexual orientation, gender identity, or relationships differ from the prevailing norm.
After Nepal and Taiwan, Thailand is the third Asian country to legalize same-sex marriage. Neighbouring countries in Southeast Asia are a long way from doing so, yet according to the US-based Pew Research Center, it is likely that a broad majority favours legalization in many other places. For instance, a 2023 study indicates that about 65 percent of respondents in Vietnam support making marriage available to same-sex couples. That figure is 57 percent in Cambodia and at least 45 percent in Singapore.
The situation is different in Malaysia. Social acceptance of same-sex relationships there is only at 17 percent. Moreover, homosexuality is illegal. There is no general ban on it in Indonesia, however at only five percent, social acceptance is particularly low. There are no data for the Philippines, but a bill meant to combat discrimination on the basis of sexual orientation has been a subject of debate for years with no legally binding result thus far.
The Political Background
The study shows that 60 percent of the Thai population is in favour of marriage for all, but the road to achieving legalization was a rocky one even here. There have long been efforts to enshrine equality for non-heterosexual couples in law. Under growing pressure from civil society, the government of then-Prime Minister Yingluck Shinawatra had a bill drafted in 2012 that would legally recognize same-sex couples. The initiative had support across party lines, however it was blocked due to the military coup in May 2014; only later did the new, military-backed government take it up again. However, a bill proposed in 2018 by the Ministry of Justice was never adopted. The 2019 UN study Tolerance but Not Inclusion therefore concluded that, while people in Thailand with non-traditional gender identities may be socially accepted, only limited support existed for political reforms in favour of equality.
It was a long, difficult struggle to achieve marriage for all. A lot of people suffered from not being allowed to marry.
Thailand is a conservative country with an unstable political system. Periods of democracy have alternated with military rule since the end of the absolute monarchy in 1932, with the constitution re-written on numerous occasions. Officially, the constitutional monarchy sees the king in a primarily representative function. “In reality, the royal house intervenes in the country’s politics on a regular basis — especially when the democratically elected government is overthrown by the military”, writes Praphakorn Lippert, a researcher based in Passau, Germany, in an essay for the Rosa-Luxemburg-Stiftung. Moreover, the monarchy is considered untouchable. A law against insulting the sovereign prohibits any criticism of the king, with thousands of activists sentenced to long prison sentences. For this reason, reforming the law or even abolishing it entirely is one of its most important demands of the pro-democracy movement.
The 2014 military coup is regarded as the defining political event in the recent history of Thailand. At the time, the political landscape was divided between two large party blocs. On one side was Prime Minister Yingluck Shinawatra’s populist Pheu Thai Party (PTP, For Thais Party), which was founded in 2008 as a successor to Yingluck’s father Thaksin Shinawatra’s Thai Rak Thai Party (TRT, Thais Love Thais Party) after it was forced to disband. On the other side was the conservative Democrat Party and others close to the military and the royal family. Mass protests by the pro-Thaksin “Red Shirts” and the royalist “Yellow Shirts” have brought international attention to the two camps’ bitter political rivalry.
After it seized power, the military had a new constitution written that was supposed to pave the way for the country’s return to democracy. However, critics regarded it as a flagrant attempt by the junta to permanently cement the military’s political influence, for example by securing the right to appoint Senators during a transitional period.
Despite massive criticism of this approach, the Thai people adopted the new constitution through a 2016 referendum. The first parliamentary elections thereafter were held in March 2019, less than three years later, although there were significant shortcomings in their execution. Ultimately, the military government was able to affirm its power.
Repression of the Left
However, a new political force appeared during the elections. The Future Forward Party (FFP), which was founded only in 2018, quickly established itself as an alternative not only to the traditional elite, but also to the Thaksin camp. Its critical stance toward the military and the monarchy helped it to win 17 percent of the vote right out of the gate, particularly among young, progressive, and left-leaning urban voters. But its political aspirations were nipped in the bud when the constitutional court ordered the party to be dissolved in early 2020 due to alleged financial irregularities.
This led to a new round of mass demonstrations. For millions of young citizens, the politically motivated ban on the FFP was obviously “the straw that broke the camel’s back”, says Praphakorn Lippert. Voters gained the impression that they no longer had the political means to bring about change in their country. At the height of the protests in July 2020, hundreds of thousands of people took to the streets of Bangkok. Their demands ranged from more democracy and a new revision of the constitution to abolishing the law against insulting the king. But the state responded harshly and issued a ban on public assemblies. Thousands of activists were arrested or fled abroad.
Recognizing same-sex marriage can be understood as a strategic concession by the government in order to water down the queer movement’s more radical demands and force the movement into a neoliberal framework.
Against a backdrop of repression, the country’s progressive forces regrouped. The Move Forward Party (MFP) was founded in 2014 and became the de facto successor to the FFP, with a similar logo and a similar political programme that included a call to legalize marriage for all. The party received 38 percent of the votes cast in the May 2023 parliamentary elections, making it the biggest winner by far. However, despite its electoral victory, it was prevented from forming a government and later dissolved entirely by the constitutional court.
The populist Pheu Thai Party took power after receiving just under 29 percent of the vote. It cobbled together a disparate coalition with several conservative parties that were aligned with the military, which meant that the country’s traditional elite had once again secured its influence. “It was a merciless counterstrike by the ruling class”, laments activist Jirapreeya Saeboo. The young woman from Bangkok adds that, while the resistance remains unbroken, the movement lacks the energy to continue fighting for more democracy.
A First Step: Marriage for All
How did it come to be that a populist conservative coalition consisting, of all things, of the PTP and parties connected to the military now pass a progressive law legalizing same-sex marriage? “The government couldn’t get around it any more”, says Saeboo, noting that most of the population supported the measure, and civil society had spent years fighting for it. “Opposing it would have been detrimental to the coalition.” At the same time, marriage for all had been de-politicized. Saeboo calls it “rainbow capitalism”, because ultimately the slogan “Love Wins” is backed by companies expecting change will bring economic gain.
Saeboo believes that “recognizing same-sex marriage can be understood as a strategic concession by the government in order to water down the queer movement’s more radical demands and force the movement into a neoliberal framework”. With marriage for all, other conceptions of the family were deliberately cut out. “What about queer people who don’t want to get married?” she asks, before answering her own question: “Their needs go unacknowledged when gender equality is equated with love and marriage.” Additionally, depoliticizing and simultaneously promoting marriage for all as a symbol of progress means that more contentious demands — such as adjusting gender identity in legal documents or recognizing non-normative family structures — are ignored or even actively combatted.
Netiwit Chotiphatphaisal agrees with this criticism in principle, but nonetheless wants to emphasize the positive aspects: “It was a long, difficult struggle to achieve marriage for all. A lot of people suffered from not being allowed to marry. So I hope that the law brings about more equality in Thailand and is a first step toward a more just society.” One can only hope that he is correct.
This article first appeared in nd.Aktuell in collaboration with the Rosa Luxemburg Foundation. Translated by Joseph Keady and Sonja Hornung for Gegensatz Translation Collective.