Gay adoption is allowed in Hong Kong, but it rarely happens. Is there discreet discrimination at work?
For same-sex couple Richard and David, the eight-year wait for a child has been interminable and opaque. Now their lawyer wants to turn theirs into a test case against the Social Welfare Department
It was January 1999 when Richard and David met in Bali, Indonesia. Richard, who is British, was 33. David, Australian, was 30. Within a week, they realised it was going to be a long-term relationship. Early on, David told Richard there was something he needed to know.
“He was very nervous,” Richard recalls. “He said, ‘I’ve always seen myself with a family’ … And I remember feeling: Wow! Me too! There was this amazing energy that we’d each found someone on the same page.”
Even as a child, Richard, who has two sisters, always imagined he would have three children. David – who has, as he puts it, a “convoluted” family background of step-siblings – imagined he’d have six. Being a parent was always part of the plan.
For the first year, the pair shuttled back and forth between Britain and Australia. Then David moved to London. They’d sit around dinner tables and discuss their desire to have a family; and their gay friends would scoff at the notion of their having children.
“Because it wasn’t common then, not in the UK,” says Richard. “And now so many of those same friends who pooh-poohed it have surrogate children. We’re probably one of the few remaining who don’t.”
They hesitate to sound as if they are criticising those who have made that choice or that they are virtue-signalling, but, as David puts it, “There are children who have fallen on hard times – children that already exist in the world that need to transition into a secure, loving environment. Why are we […] having more?”