A judge in China has ruled a gay couple cannot register as married, in the country’s first case of its kind.<\/p>\n
Sun Wenlin and Hu Mingliang filed a lawsuit against Changsha city authorities after their application to register a union was rejected.<\/p>\n
In January, a district court agreed to hear the case, a first in China.\u00a0China does not legally recognize same-sex marriage, but there is growing awareness of lesbian, gay, bisexual and transgender issues.<\/p>\n
On Wednesday, there were cheers for Mr Sun, 27, and Mr Hu, 37, when they entered the court, from hundreds of supporters who had gathered outside.<\/p>\n
Authorities allowed about 100 of them inside.\u00a0The court dismissed the case a few hours after the hearing started.<\/p>\n
The couple’s lawyer, Shi Funong, said he had expected the judgement to go against them, but not so quickly.<\/p>\n
“It goes against the spirit of the laws of the People’s Republic of China,” he said.<\/p>\n
Mr. Sun said he would appeal against Wednesday’s court decision.\u00a0The two men had tried to register their union in June last year and filed the lawsuit in December.<\/p>\n
Mr. Sun said police had visited him after he filed the case to try to persuade him to drop it, but he refused.<\/p>\n
“The original text of the Marriage Law does not say one man and one woman, but a husband and a wife. I personally believe that this term refers not only to heterosexual couples but also to same-sex couples,” he said in an interview with state media in January.
\n–
\nBy: BBC<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
A judge in China has ruled a gay couple cannot register as married, in the country’s first case of its kind. Sun Wenlin and Hu Mingliang filed a lawsuit against Changsha city authorities after their application to register a union was rejected. In January, a district court agreed to hear the case, a first in […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":14,"featured_media":206525,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"jnews-multi-image_gallery":[],"jnews_single_post":[],"jnews_primary_category":[],"jnews_social_meta":[],"jnews_override_counter":[],"footnotes":""},"categories":[107],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-206523","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-international"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/citifmonline.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/206523","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/citifmonline.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/citifmonline.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/citifmonline.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/14"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/citifmonline.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=206523"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/citifmonline.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/206523\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/citifmonline.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/citifmonline.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=206523"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/citifmonline.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=206523"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/citifmonline.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=206523"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}