Many hope new legislation on same-sex unions can pull Thailand into a new era
ina Milintanapa and Lee Battia are proud parents. Their oldest boy, Chene, 8, is a budding actor who regularly appears in television commercials. His 6-year-old brother, Charlie, is ranked number two in swimming for his age cohort in Thailand and recently recorded a time of 21.3 seconds for 25 meters. .
Milintanapa, 39, from Bangkok, is a trans woman. She has been with Battia for almost 20 years and the two were married in the U.S. in 2019. But their marriage is not recognized in Thailand, where the couple live and where people of the same sex cannot wed, nor trans people. It also means that she and Battia can only adopt their children as individuals, not as a couple. Officially, Chene is Battia’s adopted child alone. Charlie is Milintanapa’s.
There are signs that Thai lawmakers are starting to agree. On June 15, they accepted four separate bills on same-sex and non-heteronormative unions into committee stage. However, the four bills offer vastly different levels of protections. Depending on the result, Milintanapa could potentially marry as a woman—her clear preference—or deny her gender identity, at least on paper, and marry as a legal man.
In the capital Bangkok, and other tourist hotspots, visitors remark on the prominence of gender-nonconforming people in the hospitality industry. Many visitors assume that such permissiveness carries through to the rest of Thai society.But the truth is that queer people flock to sectors like tourism, entertainment, leisure, and sex work because they are frozen out of other fields.
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