Hong Kong Refuses To Recognise International Same Sex Marriages
In a devastating blow for local LGBTQI communities, a Hong Kong court this week has refused to recognise same sex marriages conducted abroad. “The applicant’s attempt in the present case to achieve complete parity of legal recognition of foreign same-sex marriages and foreign opposite-sex marriages is too ambitious,” Judge Anderson Chow wrote in his judgment.The case bought forward by Jimmy Sham, a local district councillor who in 2013 had married his partner in New York, argued that Hong Kong should recognise all gay marriages registered overseas and that refusal to do so was “highly unfair and discriminatory.”It was only in 1991 after close to two decades of advocacy and public debate, that the Hong Kong Legislative Council finally