TOKYO (LifeSiteNews) — A Tokyo court has ruled Japan’s ban on homosexual “marriage” is constitutional, in an unusual decision defying a recent streak of court rulings in the country.
Maintaining traditional marriage helps the raising of children, said Judge Ayumi Higashi in the ruling, also noting that it “is reasonable to interpret” the law’s reference to “‘husband and wife’ as a man and a woman,” reported Japan Today.
Higashi ruled that the freedom of marriage established by Article 24 of Japan’s constitution does not apply to homosexual relationships. Article 24 of the Constitution states, “Marriage shall be based only on the mutual consent of both sexes.”
The judge advised that laws on homosexual “marriage” should be deliberated in parliament, according to the newspaper Mainichi.
The plaintiffs plan to appeal the decision, which will be heard by the Supreme Court potentially next year.
By contrast, five relatively recent high court rulings across the country ruled that lack of legal status for homosexual “marriage” violated the Constitution. These decisions, however, all rejected compensation claims, and Japanese high courts do not have the authority to invalidate current law, making the rulings symbolic.
Japan Today reported that “among 12 high and lower court rulings so far,” only one other court, the Osaka District Court, ruled the ban on homosexual “marriage” is constitutional.
While Japan’s new prime minister, Sanae Takaichi, opposes homosexual so-called “marriage,” the highly secular country mostly supports the deviant practice: About 70 percent of Japanese people allegedly support homosexual “marriage,” according to a 2023 Pew survey – the highest rate of acceptance out of all the Asian countries surveyed.
A number of cities and localities in Japan issue “partnership certificates” for homosexual relationships. For example, Tokyo’s Shibuya District passed a law in 2015 that recognizes homosexuals “as partners equivalent to those married under the law.”
Japan remains one of a handful of countries in the developed world, along with countries such as Italy, South Korea, and the Czech Republic, that have not legalized so-called homosexual “marriage.”
