LGBTQ+ Rights in Hong Kong

By: Ethan Yu

LGBTQ+ is a minority of people in the world who are lesbians, gays, bisexuals, transgender, intersex and asexual.

Those in Western Europe and the Americas generally are more accepting of homosexuality. Asia and Africa tend to have struggles accepting homosexuality. Pew Research Centre surveyed many countries in 2002 and 2019 and found that most of them, such as the United States, India and South Africa had a double-digit percentage rise.

What about the situations and rights of those minorities in Hong Kong? Marriage is the secure bond between two people. Do you know what it feels like to be told that you couldn’t marry the person you love? Hong Kong same-sex couples do not have the right to marry in Hong Kong.

A same-sex couple who got married in another country isn’t counted as a ‘valid marriage’ in Hong Kong. When the deceased hasn’t made a will, the ‘surviving spouse’ doesn't have the right to share the deceased couple’s premises. The gay or lesbian person may become homeless. The person cannot get the deceased financial support too.

An LGBTQ+ person would get more protection from working in a public sector than from a private sector. Multinational companies will have a very different workspace than local small or medium-sized businesses. It depends on the socioeconomic position. However, when an organization is clear and proactive about having an inclusive environment, LGBT employees may tend to open up to anyone at work about their personal lives. Their productivity and performance will tend to get better because they don’t have to worry about exposing their true identities.

A transgender person must complete their gender-affirming surgeries to change their gender on the identity card. But the surgery is costly, so not many LGBT people afford it. So they simply take hormones to look like women or men. It won’t really change their skeletal structure.

Brenda Alegre is a Transgender lecturer from the University of Hong Kong. She is a representative of the LGBT. She encountered unsympathetic people while struggling for acceptance in Hong Kong. She hasn’t done any surgery except top surgery, therefore, she can’t change her gender on her ID card. Civilian people who claimed to be police questioned her in an impolite and threatening way. It's scary and humiliating. Transgender people should have the right to use public toilets. The University of Hong Kong has built the first unisex toilets on campus. The Hong Kong government should build more all-gender toilets in offices, malls and parks, while private sectors should build more unisex toilets in their buildings.

The Chinese University of Hong Kong did a telephone survey in 2016 and 2020 and only 12% disagreed that there should be laws against discriminating LGBTQ+. Hong Kong people now have been more accepting of homosexuality