[Lawmakers in the Himalayan country
voted this week to amend a 2004 law that criminalizes “sexual conduct that is
against the order of nature,” previously treated as a reference to gay sex.]
Stigma and discrimination are rife,
activists say, and it’s common for gay people to be blackmailed. “These are the
issues that don’t get talked about, but this is the reality,” said Tashi
Tsheten, a founding member of the local advocacy group Rainbow Bhutan.
This week, however, lawmakers in
the Himalayan country voted to amend a line from Bhutan’s penal code that
criminalizes “sodomy or any other sexual conduct that is against the order of
nature,” previously treated as a reference to gay sex.
The move, which still needs the
king’s approval to become law, was the latest example of an Asian government
loosening restrictive laws governing the private lives of L.G.B.T. people.
In neighboring India, the Supreme
Court unanimously struck down one of the world’s oldest
bans on consensual gay sex in 2018, ruling that gay Indians were to be
accorded all the protections of the Constitution.
Last year, lawmakers in
Taiwan voted
to legalize same-sex marriage, a first for Asia. That gave new leverage to
activists campaigning for marriage
equality in Japan and beyond.
And in July, Thailand’s cabinet
said that it had approved a draft bill that would give
same-sex unions many of the same benefits as heterosexual marriages.
The legislation avoided the term “marriage,” but allowed for the legal
registration of same-sex partnerships.
Bhutan’s new law, which passed both
houses of Parliament on Thursday, “folds Bhutan into the global momentum toward
recognizing equality for lesbian, gay, and bisexual people,” said Kyle Knight,
a senior researcher in the L.G.B.T. rights program at Human Rights Watch who
has written about the law.
However, he added, “Bhutan still
has significant work to do to ensure that the rights of people who have been
long marginalized on the basis of their sexual orientation or gender identity
are fully protected.”
Bhutan’s penal code was introduced
in 2004, four years before this Buddhist-majority nation of 800,000
people held its first
elections as part of a transition from absolute monarchy to
constitutional democracy. Much of the code was adopted from criminal laws in
the United States, according to a recent analysis by the legal scholars Dema Lham and
Stanley Yeo.
The parts about sodomy and
“unnatural sex,” though, are identical to language in other penal codes around
South Asia that was copied from the Indian Penal Code, a law introduced in the
1860s by the British colonial authorities, said Mr. Tsheten, the Bhutanese
activist. Individuals charged with “unnatural sex” acts in Bhutan would be
subject to penalties consistent with a petty misdemeanor.
The campaign to amend anti-gay
language in Bhutan’s penal code did not involve much direct lobbying from
L.G.B.T. activists, Mr. Tsheten said, in part because formally registering a
gay rights advocacy group in the country could be interpreted to mean that you
were “standing up for criminals.”
Instead, he said, it grew out of an
effort to help the Health Ministry prevent H.I.V. in the country’s gay
community. “What we did was just show people in Bhutan that we exist,” he said.
The ministry became an ally because
it recognized that the penal code’s reference to “unnatural sex” could prevent
gay and bisexual men from seeking H.I.V. treatment. And when the penal code
came up for review last year, Finance Minister Namgay Tshering — who had
previously worked at the Health Ministry and the World Bank — stood up in Parliament to insist that the outdated
language be repealed.
“My primary reason is that this
section is there since 2004 but it has become so redundant and has never been
enforced,” Mr. Tshering said. “It is also an eyesore for international human
rights bodies.”
When Bhutan’s lawmakers voted on
Thursday to amend the penal code’s reference to “unnatural sex,” Pema Dorji, an
L.G.B.T. activist who was sitting in the chamber, was so nervous that he could
not watch.
“I just closed my eyes,” said Mr.
Dorji, a founding member of the advocacy group Queer Voices of Bhutan. “I was
looking at the floor the whole time as I waited for them to raise their hands.”
Ugyen Wangdi, a lawmaker on a panel
considering the changes, told Reuters on Thursday that 63 of Bhutan’s 69
lawmakers had voted to amend the penal code. The other six were absent.
The language about “unnatural sex”
will reman in the code, Mr. Tsheten said, but will now be followed by a
sentence clarifying that “homosexuality between adults” does not meet that
definition.
He said that while the amended
language “opens up a lot of doors” for Bhutan’s L.G.B.T. community, there would
be no shortage of homophobia to overcome. Gay friends of his who have been
blackmailed, for example, have been forced to change schools or start new
social media profiles.
“You get a very hostile sense,” he
said, “that your friends or colleagues would not be supportive if you came
out.”
