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With their home city Hong Kong<\/a> unable to honor their wish to get married, Dino Wong and his boyfriend Geoffrey Yu flew more than 2,000 miles across the ocean to Guam to tie the knot in 2019.<\/p>\n\n\n\n The trip wasn\u2019t cheap \u2013 $5,000 just for the return flights, two nights of accommodation and the registration fee \u2013 but it was the best option they could find, with Hong Kong not recognizing same-sex marriage.<\/p>\n\n\n\n It wasn\u2019t their dream wedding \u2013 they exchanged vows in the corridor of a nondescript government building on the western Pacific island, without the presence of parents and guests.<\/p>\n\n\n\n There was a post-wedding party later in Hong Kong, but their marriage has never been officially recognised at home, something Wong had always hoped would happen.<\/p>\n\n\n\n But his hopes were dashed on Wednesday when Hong Kong\u2019s legislature voted down a proposed same-sex partnerships bill that would have seen the city become the fourth place in Asia to recognize same-sex marriages, after Taiwan, Nepal and Thailand.<\/p>\n\n\n\n Hong Kong, which markets itself as \u201cAsia\u2019s World City\u201d and China\u2019s financial gateway to the world,\ufeff decriminalized homosexuality in 1991 but has yet to recognize same-sex marriage or legislate against discriminations based on sexual orientation grounds.<\/p>\n\n\n\n Under the proposed bill, same-sex couples married overseas would have been able to register their marriage in Hong Kong and be granted rights to hospital visits and to make medical decisions on behalf of a spouse, as well as claiming their partner\u2019s body or deciding where their loved one should be buried. It still didn\u2019t afford same-sex couples full equality, but Wong and many others in the community saw it as a step forward.<\/p>\n\n\n\n The former British colony is generally more open-minded on LGBTQ issues compared to mainland China<\/a>, where discussion of such topics is heavily policed<\/a> by authorities.<\/p>\n\n\n\n