BMCC Submission Supporting Passage of the Same-Sex Partnership Registration Bill

Submission Supporting Passage of the Same-Sex Partnership Registration Bill

To the Honourable Members of the Bills Committee,

We are Blessed Ministry Community Church (BMCC / Hong Kong Blessed Minority Christian Fellowship), Hong Kong’s first publicly affirming Christian church for sexual and gender minorities (LGBTQIA2S+), and Asia’s first LGBTQ-affirming church. In 2025 we have about 70 active members — including same-sex couples planning to marry, same-sex couples already married overseas, bisexual, asexual, transgender and non-binary persons, cisgender heterosexual parents of LGBTQ+ children, and heterosexual believers who have long supported equal family systems. Our Board of Deacons and Co-Workers’ Council together support the Legislative Council’s passage of the Same-Sex Partnership Registration Bill, and earnestly urge the government to further refine the legal framework so that every committed, family-building partnership receives reasonable, equal, and substantive protection.

Part I: First-Person Experiences and Community Realities

On behalf of many LGBTQ+ members of our church, we summarise their personal circumstances — the institutional dilemmas, emotional traumas, and judicial delays they have faced:

• Unable to handle medical and after-death arrangements. A couple living together for 15 years: when one fell critically ill, the hospital refused the other access to visit or to medical information — because the law did not recognise direct family ties. Medical and burial decisions were taken over by long-estranged biological relatives.

• Overseas marriages have no domestic effect — life as strangers. Several members have completed legal marriages in Canada and the United Kingdom, but on returning to Hong Kong cannot apply for public housing as a family unit, file joint taxes, sponsor a spousal visa, or inherit MPF. Some have even been required by the Immigration Department to submit additional proof of family relationship, exposing them to separation risk.

• Psychological trauma and fear. An older believer who came out after fifty has lived with their partner for twenty years without being able to declare the relationship publicly. They feared that after death their ashes would be forcibly separated by their natal family, and resorted to a private will and trust structure — at considerable legal cost and complexity.

• Difficulties for transgender and non-binary persons. A transgender man living with his partner could not, because his ID card had not been updated, sign medical authorisation as the partner, and was repeatedly misgendered by clinical staff.

• Loss of rental rights through lack of partner proof. One same-sex couple, with one as the registered tenant, lost their housing security entirely when that person died — the surviving partner had no legal standing.

These are not isolated cases. Within our church we hear many such experiences. They reflect the absence of basic institutional protection, the daily indignity of being unrecognised, and the structural costs of having to work around the system through expensive legal contrivance.

Part II: Why This Bill Matters

We affirm that this bill is a minimum response to the Court of Final Appeal’s 2023 ruling in *Sham Tsz-Kit v Secretary for Justice*, which found that Hong Kong’s failure to provide any legal recognition of same-sex partnerships constituted a violation of the equality rights protected by Article 14 of the Hong Kong Bill of Rights. The court ordered a two-year grace period for remedial measures.

The bill, by establishing a framework to recognise same-sex partnerships registered overseas and providing basic protections — medical decision-making, hospital visitation, after-death arrangements — does not equal “marriage.” It does not undermine traditional marriage. It does, however, fulfil the court’s constitutional command and provides a baseline of dignity for our community.

Part III: Recommendations for Refinement

We recommend that the government, in passing this bill, also:

1. Extend the scope of recognition to include domestic LGBTQ+ partnerships (not only those registered overseas), so that those without the means to marry abroad are not excluded.

2. Coordinate amendments to related laws — including housing, taxation, MPF, immigration, inheritance — so that the recognition is substantive, not symbolic.

3. Provide for medical decision-making, advance medical directives, and enduring powers of attorney to be enforceable for registered partners, ensuring access in critical moments.

4. Ensure non-discrimination in administration. Public agencies must accept the registration as conclusive proof of the partnership in all relevant contexts, eliminating case-by-case discretion that perpetuates unequal treatment.

5. Establish accessible registration procedures — simple, low-cost, and respectful of privacy and safety considerations for partners who are not yet out.

6. Provide public education on the system, in collaboration with religious bodies, family social workers, and educators — respecting different faith backgrounds while ensuring that same-sex partner families are not framed as “abnormal” or “undesirable.”

Finally, we believe the bill must be amended in coordination with other ordinances. As earlier mentioned, only by integrating the legal status of same-sex partnerships into the broader legal system can recognition move from symbolic gesture to substantive protection. Horizontal integration is essential.

Only in this way can Hong Kong build a truly equal, sustainable, and dignified family-protection system, in which every relationship of love and shared responsibility is seen and protected under the law. This is not value-importing — it is a constitutional response. It is not the pursuit of privilege — it is institutional repair. Legislation is never only for today; it lays the foundation of fairness and peaceful coexistence for the next generation. We know reform is not the work of a day. But history will remember how, in this place and at this time, legislators’ choices moved Hong Kong’s rule of law a critical step forward. We thank the countless people who, over years of equality work, have made this moment of historic possibility. Their conviction is precisely what allows Hong Kong, in this moment, to lay a more just and equal foundation of law for the future.

28 July 2025
The Board of Deacons and Co-Workers’ Council
Blessed Ministry Community Church (BMCC)