The Justice Ministry has started public hearings on the same-sex marriage bill to be submitted to the cabinet this month and its online survey has found no direct objection.
Justice Vice Minister Pongsatorn Sajjacholapan opened the public hearing at Miracle Grand Convention Hotel in Bangkok on Monday. He said the bill would legalise the marriage life of lesbians, gays, bisexuals and transgenders.
The Rights and Liberties Protection Department would hold more public hearings in Ayutthaya, Chiang Mai, Songkhla and Khon Kaen provinces to sound out opinions from people in four regions, he said.
The department would then submit the bill, together with findings from the public hearings and its online survey to the cabinet, within this month, Mr Pongsatorn said.
Vitit Muntabhorn, a law lecturer from Chulalongkorn University, said about 30-40 countries had legalised LGBT marriages and Taiwan and Australia were the latest to join the trend.
About 70 countries still prohibited same-sex marriages, he said. He supported the legality and hoped the bill would be passed within the tenure of the present government.
The bill did not include child adoption, taxation and social welfare pending amendments of related laws and more social recognition, he said.
Nareelak Paechaiyapum, director of the Rights and Liberties Protection Department's international human rights, said based on the results obtained so far, the online survey of the Justice Ministry categorised respondents into three groups.
The first supported the bill and are looking forward to it. The second disagreed with it, not because of its content but because they would never support any bill proposed by an unelected government. The third opposed it because they wanted a more drastic version which gives same-sex couples the same legal rights as heterosexual ones currently enjoy.
Miss Nareelak said the new law would need further revisions because government organisations had yet to amend their laws accordingly and the public needed time to adjust to the concept of same-sex marriages.
People may express their opinions on the draft bill at the department's website.
The current 70-section bill was the third after the department started drafting it in 2013.
Under existing laws, same-sex couples do not have the rights to make medical decisions for their spouses or arrange their funerals; to adopt and have joint custody of a child or to have a surrogate child.
Furthermore, they do not get personal income tax deductions currently enjoyed by heterosexual couples; the right to the social security fund of the spouses; the right to use their spouses’ names; the right to be party to a court case on behalf of their spouses; and the right to state welfare for couples.
Some activists who agree with the principle of the draft, however, oppose it and want it scrapped.
Instead of the bill, they want a much simpler solution -- expanding the term “married couples”, currently referring only to heterosexual ones in the Civil and Commercial Code, to cover same-sex couples as well.
They reason this method would automatically grant both types of couples the same rights and does not call for complicated amendments to other laws.
