Mixed response over new Thai initiative to empower LGBT community

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Some LGBT rights activists remain skeptical even as Thailand’s new constitution that is being drafted will include a clause to protect the rights of transgender and gay communities and ensure that they receive fairer legal treatment.

"We are putting the words ‘third gender’ in the constitution because Thai society has advanced,” Kamnoon Sittisamarn, spokesman for the Constitution Drafting Committee told Reuters recently.

“There are not only men and women, we need to protect all sexes. We consider all sexes to be equal," he told the news agency which also reported that “the new measure would ensure all sexual identities were protected under the constitution and treated equally by the law.”

The committee was put together by the military to prepare a new constitution after the previous one was scrapped following a coup that overthrew a civilian government past May. The “new measure” is to be submitted to the National Reform Council by April and will need to be formally approved by the ruling junta.

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