DigitalJournal.com – By dpa Correspondents
Entire streets in Bangkok are dedicated to gay bars, the city’s hospitals have become an international mecca for sex-change surgeries and Thailand’s TV and film scene abound with “katoey,” or transvestite comic characters, and gay love stories to the point of tedium.
Thailand’s Pattaya beach resort is famed for its annual Miss Transvestite Pageant and the island of Phuket has been hosting a gay pride parade since 1999 with the full support of local authorities.
Yet when Thai gay rights activists earlier this year pushed for a mention in the country’s just-drafted constitution, the 18th to date, legislators baulked at a clause guaranteeing equal rights for the “third sex” along with other downtrodden folk – women, children, the poor and disabled.