VIETNAM — In what some are arguably calling the latest (and most controversial) salvo in the same-sex marriage debate, Deputy Health Minister Nguyen Viet Tien will deliver a speech today in Hanoi that calls for the immediate repeal on the ban on same-sex marriage. “[A]s human beings, homosexuals have the same rights as everyone else to live, eat, love and be loved. As citizens, they have the right to work, study, receive health care, register births and deaths, marry and discharge their duties to the state and the society.”
Vietnam, which codified its ban on same-sex marriages in 2000 with the Marriage and Family Law, recently scrapped the fines and penalties it assessed on people of the same gender who marry. And while this culturally conservative country in Southeast Asia still has overwhelming opposition to same-sex marriage – a recent poll by the Institute for Studies of Society, Economic and Environment (iSEE) revealed that 58 percent of Vietnamese oppose the idea of same-sex marriage – society seems to be changing at a breakneck pace.
Vietnam held its first public Gay Pride parade Aug. 5, 2012 in Hanoi and the country’s first publicized gay wedding went viral online in 2010. Furthermore the TV show, My Best Gay Friends, has been phenomenally successful on YouTube where the first episode has already garnered more than one million views.
Whether or not Vietnam is ready to take its place in history as the first Asian nation to legalize same-sex marriage remains to be seen. But with the recognition that, as sexual minorities, the LGBT community suffers extreme discrimination and, more than in many societies, hides their sexuality deeply in a closet not always of their own making, Health Minister Nguyen Viet Tien’s call to end the ban without further delay, study or review offers hope that a revolution may soon be at hand.
