SOUTH KOREA

Eleven same-sex couples have applied to register their marriages in what the group are saying is the first step in a legal challenge for same-sex marriage rights in South Korea. 

The couples had their marriage applications rejected by the local district offices, so they filed objections with the local courts. The couples allege that the current law, which bans same-sex marriage, violates their constitutional rights to equality, and the pursuit of happiness.

Among the couples pursuing the cases is Kim Yong-min and So Sung-wook, who earlier this year won a case at the Supreme Court seeking to require the government to provide health benefits to same-sex partners. The National Health Insurance Service has, however, continued to deny claims by same-sex couples in defiance of the ruling, saying that there are no clear legal standards of what constitutes a same-sex couple.

South Korea does not have any legal framework for recognizing same-sex couples, and the country lacks national-level discrimination protections for LGBTQ people. Legislators have also tended to be hostile to queer rights, with the Seoul Queer Culture Festival facing repeated bans from the city government.

The courts have also taken an inconsistent view on LGBTQ rights. In 2022, the Supreme Court severely curtailed a law that banned soldiers from having same-sex intercourse, a ruling that was overturned the following year by the Constitutional Court, a co-equal top court of South Korea’s judicial system. 

CYPRUS

The Cypriot parliament began debate this week on a bill that would stiffen existing penalties for hate crimes, following a string of violent attacks on LGBTQ people on the island over the past year.

The bill would raise the maximum penalty for anti-LGBTQ hate crimes from three years to five years in prison and double the maximum fine to €10,000 ($10,924.35.)

The bill comes after more than 10 anti-gay attacks have been reported to police on the Mediterranean island of 1 million people this year alone. 

Last month, a gay man claimed he was assaulted by a security guard outside a Limassol nightclub. 

Last year, police issued arrest warrants for five students at Limassol’s Technical University of Cyprus, alleging they threw smoke bombs into an on-campus event hosted by Accept-LGBTI, the country’s leading queer advocacy group, then vandalized the room and assaulted a student attendee.

Separately, the government approved the drafting of the country’s first National Strategy for LGBTQ people.

The strategy will be drafted by the country’s human rights commissioner with representatives from the ministries of justice, education, interior, and health, as well as representatives from Accept-LGBTI and academia.

The goal of the strategy is to align Cyprus’s legislation with European Union directives, addressing discrimination, ensuring equality and security, and promoting an inclusive society for the LGBTQ community.

Currently, Cyprus lacks comprehensive anti-discrimination protections for LGBTQ people and does not have a straightforward process for transgender people to update their legal gender, both of which are increasingly norms expected of EU members. The state also does not allow same-sex marriage or adoption, although neighboring Greece legalized both earlier this year.

NETHERLANDS

The Dutch government’s statistics bureau released a report on National Coming Out Day that estimates that LGBTQ people make up approximately 18 percent of the country’s population, or approximately 2.7 million people.

The estimate is drawn from a study the bureau conducted last year on safety and criminality, which also asked its 182,000 participants about their gender identity and sexual orientation.

The study found that bisexual people make up by far the largest cohort of the country’s LGBTQ community, with 1.7 million people, or just over 11 percent of the population, with about 20 percent more bisexual women than men. Conversely, gay men make up about 1.8 percent of the population, while lesbians account for 0.7 percent of the population

Asexuals make up just under 2 percent of the population, while just over 1 percent identified as some other non-heterosexual orientation or said they didn’t yet know their sexual orientation.

About 1 percent of the population is estimated to be trans or nonbinary, just under 200,000 people. The study estimated the intersex population at about 45,000, or 0.3 percent of the population.

The study found that LGBTQ people tended to be younger and more likely to live in urban areas than the general population. It also found that the proportion of LGBTQ people born outside the Netherlands was slightly higher at 17 percent, compared to the general population, at 14 percent.

GERMANY

The German government has announced it plans to update adoption law to recognize co-maternity for lesbian couples and allow unmarried couples to adopt.

The government says the new law will recognize modern realities of adoption and procreation.

Married same-sex couples have had the right to jointly adopt since same-sex marriage became legal in Germany in 2017. However, current law still presents challenges for some couples. 

For example, when a lesbian couple conceives a child through assisted reproduction, the non-birthing parent is not automatically recognized as a parent, and must go through a legal process to adopt their own child.

The proposed law will address that issue, but it will not address male couples who conceive a child using a surrogate, as German law currently only recognizes single paternity.

The Federal Constitutional Court delivered a ruling earlier this year that opened the door to legal recognition of multi-parent families, although it gave legislators until June 2025 to figure out how that would work. The draft law, however, states that children will continue to have only two legal parents.

“The hassle of stepchild adoptions for two-mother families must be brought to an end. After all, children from rainbow families have a right to two parents from birth, and regardless of their gender,” says Patrick Dörr, a board member of the Queer Diversity Association, Germany’s largest LGBTQ advocacy group, in a statement to German newspaper DW.

The proposal would also allow more flexibility in adoptions, by allowing unmarried couples to jointly adopt. Under current law, if a couple is unmarried, only one person will be legally recognized as the adopted child’s parent.

The draft bill is now out for consultations with Germany’s state governments.

HONG KONG

Hong Kong’s Court of Final Appeal heard a case seeking to establish that same-sex couples can inherit property from each other last week, the latest same-sex couples’ rights case to reach the city’s top court. 

Last month, the Court of Final Appeal heard a case challenging the city government’s unequal treatment of same-sex couples seeking access to social housing. Both cases come after a 2023 ruling that found the government must give legal recognition to same-sex couples by a 2025 deadline.

The inheritance case was filed in 2019 by Edgar Ng, after he learned that his husband Henry Li could not inherit his government-subsidized apartment without a will. Ng passed away in December 2020, and Li has continued the case.

The government’s attorney told the court that the city does not recognize Ng and Li’s overseas marriage, and that they differ from a heterosexual married couple because heterosexual couples have a legal responsibility to financially support each other. The government’s position is that the court should not address inheritance rights until the government creates a framework for registering same-sex couples, as that could give rise to inconsistencies in the law.

Li’s attorneys, meanwhile, contested the suggestion that the inheritance issue could be settled with a written will, arguing that most people in Hong Kong die without a written will, and that written wills can be contested, unlike a legal marriage.

The court reserved its judgment for a later date.

Hong Kong, a former British colony, was returned to China in 1997, with the understanding that it would continue to operate as an autonomous unit for 50 years.