Japan's more powerful lower house passed a contentious bill on Tuesday to promote understanding of sexual minorities, paving the way for enacting the legislation by the end of the current parliamentary session through next week.
The bill is aimed primarily at banning unjust discrimination against people based on sexual orientation as Japan lags behind the other Group of Seven advanced nations in terms of legal protections for sexual minorities.
One of the most controversial aspects of the bill is a clause stipulating, "All citizens can live with peace of mind," which has been lambasted by critics for prioritizing safeguarding the rights of the majority in society rather than sexual minorities.
The House of Representatives passes a bill to promote understanding of sexual minorities, in a plenary session at parliament in Tokyo on June 13, 2023. (Kyodo)
The bill that cleared the lower house on Tuesday, if made law, would impose additional challenges and hardships on sexual minorities, the Japan Alliance for LGBT Legislation said in a statement.
The group called it legislation that "ignores the interests of LGBT people and instead caters to the side that exacerbates discrimination."
As Japan lacks laws prohibiting discrimination against LGBT individuals and legalizing same-sex marriage or civil unions, pressure had been mounting both at home and abroad for Tokyo to put such legislation into effect.
The bill describes public understanding of the diversity of sexual orientation and gender identity as "not necessarily sufficient" and asks the government to craft guidelines required for the practical implementation of the legislation.
Following the approval of the House of Representatives with the backing of the ruling bloc and two opposition parties, the LGBT bill is expected to clear the House of Councillors, the upper house of the Diet, as early as Friday, lawmakers said.
It had passed through a lower house committee last Friday after a single day of deliberations, an unusual occurrence.
The Liberal Democratic Party, led by Prime Minister Fumio Kishida, and its junior coalition partner Komeito had accepted several proposals from opposition parties and incorporated them into the original version of the bill, mapped out by the ruling camp.
Nevertheless, the other opposition parties, including the main Constitutional Democratic Party of Japan, voted against the bill, arguing that the definition of certain words within it would negatively affect the practicality of the legislation.
Conservative LDP lawmakers, who uphold traditional family values such as the role of women in giving birth and raising children, had opposed the bill but took into account Kishida's desire to secure its passage during the Diet session scheduled to close June 21.
In the run-up to the Tokyo Olympics and Paralympics in 2021, cross-party lawmakers sought to pass the LGBT legislation, but the conservative wing of the LDP eventually hampered the submission of the bill to parliament.
After months of negotiations between ruling and opposition parties earlier this year, the revised version of the 2021 draft bill was introduced to the Diet on May 18, one day before the three-day G-7 summit kicked off in Kishida's constituency of Hiroshima.
Some courts have ruled the absence of legal recognition of same-sex marriage is in a state of unconstitutionality, given that a section of Article 24 of Japan's Constitution calls for enacting laws based on individual dignity and equality of the sexes.
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Japan's ruling bloc submits bill on fostering LGBT understanding
