Thailand’s king has signed a marriage equality bill into law, making the country the first in South East Asia to recognise same-sex unions. The bill cleared the Senate in June but required royal endorsement to become law. It was published in the Royal Gazette on Tuesday and will come into effect on 22 January next year.
It depends how old you are, and your perception of time. If you were born after 2000 and in a relatively liberal democracy, it’s all you’ve ever know and can consider to be normal. If you were born in the 80s, you may have experienced being called “gay” or “homo” at school and seen LGBT people as perhaps bad, or felt shame for your own inclinations. If you were born a few decades earlier, you will very possibly have been against the concept of changing marriage as it had always existed as one thing, and changing it would be akin to changing the constitution which you’ve stood by your whole life.
Yep. I was born in 1977. To my shame, I used to use words like ‘gay’ (or worse) as an insult when I was a kid.