A court in the Chinese city of Changsha ruled Wednesday against formalizing the marriage of a gay couple in the country’s first ever same-sex marriage case. A judge dismissed 26-year-old Sun Wenlin’s lawsuit against the local civil-affairs bureau, which rejected his application to register his marriage to his partner, Hu Mingliang, in June 2015. The couple’s lawyer, Shi Funong, said he didn’t anticipate a decision so quickly—the court handed down the decision within a few hours. China doesn’t legally recognize same-sex marriage.
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