Going Backwards: why Hong Kong's decision not to recognise same-sex marriages was a mistake

By Amirah Datwani

In September 2025, Hong Kong lawmakers rejected a bill that, if passed, would have allowed for legal recognition of same-sex couples that were married overseas. Same-sex marriage is already not legal in Hong Kong. The current Marriage Ordinance reads, Every marriage under this Ordinance shall be a Christian marriage or the civil equivalent of a Christian marriage. The phrase, ‘Christian marriage’ is considered to reference a formal, law-recognised ceremony in which a man and a woman form a “voluntary union for life.”

While Hong Kong is not a completely accepting place for LGBTQ people, it is still one that is relatively safe, and queer people have gradually been able to gain access to more and more rights. This makes it all the more concerning that seventy-one out of the eighty-nine LegCo members voted against this bill.

In a time where the world’s progressing positive attitudes towards queerness seem to have regressed, as LGBTQ people are facing higher rates of hatred of persecution than they have in recent years, this decision was another blow to the LGBTQ community.

Conversations surrounding the possibility of recognising foreign same-sex marriages were started up in 2020, when LGBTQ activist Jimmy Sham, who had married his husband in New York seven years prior, filed for a judicial review, claiming that Hong Kong’s lack of recognition of foreign same-sex marriages was in violation of its mini-constitution and the Bill of Rights. He also cited the fact that Hong Kongers are granted equality before the law under Article 25 of the Basic Law. 

Sham failed in this attempt to get his marriage recognised, but appealed the ruling twice. However, both the Court of Appeal and the Final Court of Appeal denied his marriage of recognition.

The recent bill would have prevented situations like these from happening, and allowed for marriages like Sham’s to be recognised in Hong Kong. Since it has not been passed, this is a massive blow to Hong Kong’s LGBTQ community. While it is clear that current Hong Kong laws pertaining to this issue do not favour queer people, they need to be amended. The LGBTQ community is one that has been continuously prosecuted and discriminated against for decades, and even existing as a queer person can prove dangerous. The very least Hong Kong can do for its LGBTQ citizens is to recognise their marriage rights. It would be even better if gay marriage was legalised within Hong Kong, which would be a wonderful show of support for equality, but recognizing foreign same-sex marriages is more achieveable, which makes the fact that this landmark bill came so close to enacting change and was still rejected all the more devastating.

Queer people are human beings that deserve the same basic rights as heterosexual and cisgender people. Hong Kong is far from the most homophobic place on Earth, but until equality in all areas is achieved, it cannot be considered completely LGBTQ-friendly. The fact that it is so difficult to legalise something so unproblematic and unharmful is frankly infuriating. If an institution like marriage, one so representative of love and commitment, is something LGBTQ Hong Kongers cannot legally partake in entirely due to their sexualities or genders, it is a sign that we are regressing. Hong Kong’s refusal to recognise foreign same-sex marriages was undoubtedly a mistake, and it shows that we are going backwards.