A senior Immigration Department officer has filed for judicial review of marriage laws claiming the government denied him the benefits that a married person is entitled to.

If the judiciary admits the plea, it would be a landmark case as it would involve examining whether the current family law and the definition of marriage violate the Basic Law.

Senior immigration officer Leung Chun-kwong married his partner, Scott Paul Adams, in April last year in New Zealand, where same-sex marriage is allowed and legally sanctioned.

He later notified the SAR's Civil Service Bureau of the marriage. But the bureau said his marriage was not recognized under the local law, which interprets marriage as a union between an adult man and an adult woman. Leung was also not deemed a married person and denied joint assessment when he declared his taxes last year.

In the writ filed by Leung, which runs to some 100 pages, he argues that the Civil Service Bureau and Inland Revenue Department's refusal to recognize his marriage contradicted the government's anti-sexual-orientation discrimination policy and the Basic Law. He said owing to such discrimination, he had been deprived of the benefits that a married person is entitled to, including tax benefits.

Leung, who joined the Immigration Department in 2003, met his partner in Hong Kong.

A Web search by China Daily yielded a University of Hong Kong postgraduate thesis titled "Development of law against homosexual conduct: case study on Leung TC William Roy" issued in 2006 by a person of the same name.

The thesis cites the case of William Leung, who successfully challenged the local criminal law in August 2005 over setting the age of consent for homosexual men at 21, five years higher than that for lesbian couples. The four provisions of the Crime Ordinance governing homosexual acts were ordered to be rectified after the court upheld William Leung's case in December 2013.

In the dissertation, the author says "Hong Kong is still not ready at the moment and may face a lot of hurdles" for the further development of homosexual rights, "such as establishment of a law governing discrimination against sexual orientation, child adoption for gay couples and gay marriage".

But the writer also suggested that the government conduct long-term assessment of the likely social impact - that is, via public consultation and improved education on the issue - before moving to amend the law.

stushadow@chinadailyhk.com

(HK Edition 12/29/2015 page7)