Why Thailand became a haven for LGBT couples

“It has been a long fight full of tears for us.”

That is how Ann “Waaddao” Chumaporn describes the years that led to this moment – on Thursday, when same-sex marriage becomes legal in Thailand, and more than a hundred couples will tie the knot in one of Bangkok’s biggest shopping malls, in a riot of colour and celebration.

And the same question which has been heard throughout the long campaign to get the equal marriage law passed will be asked again: why Thailand? Why nowhere else, aside from Taiwan and Nepal, in Asia?

People think they know the answer. Thailand is famously open to and accepting of lesbian, gay, bisexual and trans people. They have long been visible in all walks of life. Thai people are easy-going about pretty much everything. “Mai pen rai” – no big deal – is a national catch-phrase. Buddhist beliefs, followed by more than 90% of Thais, don’t forbid LGBT lifestyles. Surely, then, equal marriage was inevitable.

Except it wasn’t. “It was not easy,” says Ms Waaddao, who organises Bangkok Pride March.

The first Pride march in Thailand took place only 25 years ago. Back then it was hard to get approval from the police, and the march was a chaotic, unfocused event. After 2006 only two marches took place until 2022. In 2009 one planned Pride march in Chiang Mai had to be abandoned because of the threat of violence.

“We were not accepted, by our own families and by society,” Ms Waaddao adds. “There were times when we did not think marriage equality would ever happen, but we never gave up.”

For all of Thailand’s general tolerance of LGBT people, getting equal rights, including marriage, required a determined campaign to change attitudes in Thai officialdom and society. And attitudes have changed.

When Chakkrit “Ink” Vadhanavira started dating his partner in 2001, they were both actors playing leading roles in TV series. At that time homosexuality was still officially described by the Thai Ministry of Health as a mental illness.

“Back then society could not accept leading male roles being played by a gay man. There was lots of gossip about us in the media, much of it untrue, which really stressed us,” Mr Chakkrit recalls.

“We decided then that if we were going to date each other, we had to leave showbiz.”

They are still together but they have stayed out of the limelight for more than 20 years, running a successful production company.

A lot has changed in that time – and their industry gets some credit for that.

The way LGBT characters are portrayed in Thai TV dramas, from comical oddities to mainstream roles, made a big difference, according to Tinnaphop Sinsomboonthong, an assistant professor at Thammasat University who self-identifies as queer.

“Nowadays they represent us as normal characters, like you see in real life,” he says. “The kind of LGBTQ+ colleague you might have in the office, or your LGBTQ+ neighbour. This really helped change perceptions and values in all generations.”

The so-called Boy Love dramas have helped bring the rest of society round to the idea of not just tolerance, but full acceptance and equal rights for the community.

These romantic television dramas featuring love affairs between beautiful young men have grown enormously in popularity over the past decade, especially during the Covid pandemic.

They are now one of Thailand’s most successful cultural exports, with huge audiences in places like China. Series like My School President and Love Sick have got hundreds of millions of views on streaming networks.

At the same time, activists became more focused and united in their bid to get the law changed. The many different LGBT groups came together in the Change 1448 campaign – 1448 is the clause in the Thai Civil Code covering the definition of marriage – and later under the Rainbow Coalition for Marriage Equality.

They linked up with other groups fighting for greater rights and freedoms in Thailand, and they learned to work with political parties in parliament to persuade them to change their stance on the law.

The resumption of Pride marches in 2022, and getting the government to recognise and promote the appeal of Thailand as an attractive destination for LGBT travellers also helped change public perceptions.

“We did not fight, we negotiated,” Mr Tinnaphop says. “We knew we had to talk to Thai society, and little by little, we shifted attitudes.”

Getting the equal marriage law through parliament was also helped by political developments in Thailand.

For five years following a coup in 2014, the country was ruled by a conservative military government, which was willing only to consider recognising civil partnerships for LGBT couples, without full rights like inheritance.

But in the 2019 election which returned Thailand to civilian rule, a new, youthful reformist party called Future Forward, which fully supported equal marriage, did unexpectedly well. They won the third-largest share of seats, revealing a growing hunger for change in Thailand.

When a year later Future Forward was dissolved by a controversial court verdict, it set off months of student-led protests calling for sweeping reforms, including curbs to the monarchy’s power.

LGBT campaigners were prominent in those protests, giving them greater national prominence. The protests eventually died down, with many of the leaders arrested for questioning the monarchy’s role.

But in the 2023 election the successor to Future Forward, calling itself Move Forward, performed even better than in 2019, winning more seats than any other party. Again, it was clear that the desire for change was felt across Thai people of all ages.

Move Forward was blocked from forming a government by conservatives who objected to its call for wholesale political reforms.

But by this time, equal marriage was less contentious. Few opposed it. And passing it gave the unwieldy and unpopular coalition government which had been formed without Move Forward a quick accomplishment with which to please most of the country.

Thailand, though, is an outlier in Asia. Few other countries in the region are likely to follow suit.

The influence of Islam in Malaysia, Indonesia and Brunei makes the notion of equal marriage a non-starter. LGBT communities there face discrimination and prosecution; in Brunei sex between men carries the death penalty.

In the Philippines, there is growing acceptance of LGBT couples living together openly. But the Roman Catholic Church vehemently opposes same-sex marriage.

In Vietnam, like Thailand, there are no religious or ideological obstacles, but campaigning to change the law, as happened in Thailand, is difficult under a repressive regime. Much the same is true in China. Until the ruling communist party endorses equal marriage, which it shows no signs of doing, it cannot happen.

Even in democracies like Japan and South Korea – where political parties are largely conservative and dominated by older men – the prospects look bleak.

“It is largely conservative Christians who are blocking it,” says Chae-yoon Han, executive director of the Beyond the Rainbow Foundation in South Korea.

“Most, if not all, politicians in the conservative party of President Yoon are devout Christians, and they have framed marriage equality as a ‘leftist agenda’, which could potentially open society to a ‘leftist, communist takeover’.”

India appeared close to legalising same-sex marriage in 2023, when the decision fell to its Supreme Court – but the judges declined, saying it was up to parliament.

So Thailand hopes to benefit from being a pioneer. Tourism is one of the few areas of the Thai economy doing well in the post-pandemic recovery, and the country is seen as a safe and welcoming destination for LGBT holiday-makers.

Growing numbers of same-sex couples from other Asian countries are choosing to live here now.

The legal recognition they can get for their marriages will allow them to raise children and grow old together with nearly all the rights and protections given to heterosexual couples.