An LGBTQ couple in Japan filed a lawsuit against the central and local governments over their refusal to recognize their marriage. The American-Japanese couple said the state refused to recognize the true nature of their marriage after one of them underwent a gender transition.
Elin McCready and Midori Morita filed the lawsuit with the Tokyo District Court Tuesday. The couple named the state, Tokyo's Meguro Ward and Ota Ward as plaintiffs in the case.
Both wards, where the couple used to live, have refused to recognize McCready's sex change due to the current Japanese marriage laws. Under the lawsuit, the couple is seeking up to $20,000 in damages for emotional distress.
The 47-year-old American and the 51-year-old Japanese resident married in 2000 and had three children. In 2018, McCready underwent a sex change in the U.S. and legally changed her name and gender. After moving back to Japan, the couple had faced several bureaucratic challenges due to the nation's same-sex marriage laws.
McCready, who works as a philosophy teacher at Aoyama Gakuin University in Tokyo, said the Japanese government should consider changing its definition of marriage to allow for same-sex couples.
"Anyone around us has been supportive and only the state won't give us support. I can't completely understand why a family like ours, which is different from opposite-sex couples, can't be recognized as a family. I'd like to know why the government refuses to accept us," McCready said.
The couple's lawyer, Toshimasa Yamashita, said the state's refusal to recognize the marriage is unconstitutional.
"Both of them are already married. We want the government to use (this lawsuit) as an opportunity to review its (stance on same-sex couples)," Yamashita said.
Japan remains to be the only G7 member country that does not legally recognize same-sex marriages. Under current Japanese laws, citizens are now allowed to change their gender when they are married as it would transform the union into a same-sex marriage. In the couple's case, the Japanese government could not prohibit McCready's sex change as she had done it while she was a foreign national.
