Thailand

In 2024, Thailand became the first country in Southeast Asia to legalize same-sex marriage. The bill passed its final reading in the Senate in June 2024 and came into effect on January 22, 2025, a day celebrated in Thailand with mass weddings capping over two decades of activism for marriage equality. The bill uses gender-neutral terms such as “marriage partners” and “individuals” instead of women, men, husbands, and wives. It guarantees same-sex couples the right to adopt and secures their inheritance rights.

Currently, no legal process is in place to allow people to change the official gender marker on their documents. However, four different versions of a Gender Recognition Bill based on self-determination have been floated and are pending discussion at the Parliament, including one drafted by the Ministry of Social Development and Human Security, and others advanced by the People’s Party, an intersex organization, and another civil society organization. Speaking at an event in May 2024 before Pride Month, Paetongtarn Shinawatra, the then-leader of the Pheu Thai Party and current prime minister, promised a push for legal gender recognition before 2030. 

Having never been colonized, Thailand does not have colonial remnants of anti-sodomy laws. LGBTIQ people enjoy relatively freer lives in Thailand than in neighboring countries. Traditional gender diversity is widely accepted in the form of kathoeys, largely understood at present as transfeminine individuals. However, despite having a positive reputation internationally for LGBTIQ people’s rights and being a destination for gender-affirming health care, activists have repeatedly noted that this perception is exploited by the tourism industry. In reality, there are significant limits to tolerance for queer and trans persons, accompanied by harmful stereotypes.

Thai trans people do not enjoy full protection from discrimination. Binary gendered uniforms are strongly enforced across educational institutions. Invasive questioning and violation of privacy are routine in health care settings. Thai Medical Council regulations describe a transgender person as “a person with behavior indicating confusion.” While a transgender person is eligible to apply for a name change, the discretion rests with government officials. The Thai national citizen ID issued to all citizens uses binary gender prefixes based on gender assigned at birth. 

In 2015, Thailand enacted the Gender Equality Act, the first national law in Southeast Asia to offer protection from discrimination based on gender expression, through a clause that prohibits any form of discrimination against a person “of a different appearance from his/her own sex by birth.” The complaints mechanism under the law has mostly been used by transgender persons in the country to seek redress from discrimination. 

Intersexphobia remains a problem, and children are subjected to nonconsensual medical intervention. At least one of the draft gender recognition laws, filed by activists in 2024 and on file with Outright, would address harmful intersex genital surgeries, discrimination, and intersex legal gender recognition.