"It has been a long fight full of tears for us." So said Ann "Waaddao" Chumaporn, the organiser of Bangkok Pride March, after Thailand finally began recognising same-sex marriages last week.
But while "hundreds of couples" celebrate the enactment of the bill by tying the knot, others are asking "the same question" that was heard "throughout the long campaign to get the equal marriage law passed", reported the BBC. "Why Thailand? Why nowhere else, aside from Taiwan and Nepal, in Asia?"
For all that Thailand is "famously open to and accepting of" LGBT people, equal rights for same-sex couples still required "a determined campaign to change attitudes", said the broadcaster's Southeast Asia correspondent Jonathan Head. And Thailand, along with Taiwan and Nepal, is "an outlier" in Asia for having legalised same-sex marriage. "Few other countries in the region are likely to follow suit."
Thailand was "already a magnet" for LGBT tourists, said The Times, particularly from far more "restrictive" areas in Asia. In predominantly Muslim countries like Indonesia and Malaysia, LGBT people face "overt discrimination at best and often criminal punishment". In Brunei, the penalty for sex between men is technically death by stoning. In China, homosexuality is by rights legal, but the government has banned same-sex couples and "effeminate men" from television.
In "largely conservative" Southeast Asia, advocating for LGBT rights "can be an uphill battle", said the South China Morning Post. But despite this, change is in the air. Activists say that today "people are more willing to come out, talk about and campaign for LGBT issues and rights". | 
