The motion moved recently by Legislative Councilor Cyd Ho urging the Government to "launch public consultation on enacting legislation to safeguard equal opportunities for and the basic rights of people of different sexual orientations" was defeated in the Functional Constituency. The view of the majority of LegCo Members elected in Geographical Constituencies was brushed aside and the need to consider and deal with the discrimination and injustice faced by Hong Kong's GLBT citizens was ignored.
Though the survey conducted by the Government six years ago revealed then that only 30% of the respondents supported enacting legislation against discrimination, the situation is changing rapidly. In a recent survey conducted by the University of Hong Kong, 63.8% of the respondents felt that Hong Kong should have laws to protect people of different sexual orientation from discrimination. 22% of respondents were "very much in favor" of such legislation and only 14.4% disagreed. This clearly shows that the argument that there is no consensus in society for the introduction of legislation is already untrue and is steadily becoming more so.
As the public consultation for the Policy Address 2013 is currently underway, we urge the HKSAR Government to:
- Pledge to launch regular public consultation on the issue of an Ordinance to outlaw discrimination on the grounds of sexual orientation .
- In the 2013-2014 Budget, allocate more funds to GLBT-friendly NGOs in order to provide needed and appropriate programs and services to promote equality and serve the unique needs of the GLBT community.
This petition was delivered to:
特首 Hong Kong CE
梁振英 Mr. CY Leung
政務司司長 Chief Secretary for Administration
林鄭月娥女士 Mrs Carrie Lam Cheng Yuet-ngor
財政司司長 Financial Secretary
曾俊華先生 Mr. TSANG Chun-wah