Same-sex tourism that flourished in the CNMI back in 2016 is still all the rage and only continues to grow. <\/p>\n
Since 2015 when same-sex marriage was legalized in the U.S. and its territories, there has been a significant jump in the number of same-sex marriages on Saipan, majority of which involved Chinese tourists.<\/p>\n
Today, Chinese tourists still continue to venture out to the CNMI to tie the knot, but so have other ethnicities such as Russians, Korean, and even Bangladeshi. <\/p>\n
According to data obtained from the Saipan Mayor\u2019s Office, there have been a total of 117 marriage licenses issued from January to June of this year. Of the 117 licenses, 90 were issued to same sex couples. <\/p>\n
From the 90 same sex couples that received marriage licenses from the Saipan Mayor\u2019s Office, 61 were female couples and 29 were male couples and majority were Chinese tourists. <\/p>\n
According to a previous interview with Saipan Mayor David M. Apatang, he had the privilege to marry a same sex couple from Bangladesh this year on top of the numerous Chinese couples he performed marriages for. <\/p>\n
Same sex marriage continues to thrive also despite the recent increase in marriage license fees that was implemented early this year. <\/p>\n
According to a previous article on the Saipan Tribune, the increase is embodied in House Bill 20-128 that was passed into law in mid-April 2018.<\/p>\n
Accordingly, nonresidents will now be charged $250 to obtain a marriage license and residents will be charged $130.<\/p>\n
All revenue raised from marriage license fees will go to the Saipan Mayor\u2019s Office account.<\/p>\n
Apatang says the change has been nothing but positive for his office.<\/p>\n
Apatang said his office has seen an increase in the number of marriages they perform in a day and the community has been receptive to the increases.<\/p>\n
\u201cAs a matter of fact, we increased the number of marriages every day. Instead of three and four every day, we increased it from five to six; that\u2019s more revenue for us,\u201d he said.<\/p>\n
Apatang said the change has been a long time coming. \u201cI think it is about time that we raised the fees for marriages. We perform a lot of marriages here in the mayor\u2019s office and it was only $50 for many years. I\u2019m glad the Legislature finally realized that we need to increase our fees,\u201d he said.<\/p>\n
The Saipan Mayor\u2019s Office will use the added revenue to continue its beautification projects in the CNMI and other projects run by the Saipan Mayor\u2019s Office.<\/p>\n
Same-sex marriages and the number of marriages performed are only expected to increase as the year progresses. <\/p>\n
The upward trend of same-sex marriages started out with the Saipan Mayor\u2019s Office officiating 12 same-sex marriages in 2015. Half of the same-sex marriage certificates issued that year were for Chinese tourists.<\/p>\n
In 2016, there was a significant jump in same-sex marriages as 30 marriage licenses where issued, 25 of which were issued to same-sex Chinese couples.<\/p>\n
The Saipan Mayor\u2019s Office issued a total of 88 marriage licenses to same-sex couples in 2017. A total of 63 marriage licenses were issued to female couples and a total of 25 marriage licenses were issued to male couples in 2017 and majority of which were Chinese tourists. <\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
Same-sex tourism that flourished in the CNMI back in 2016 is still all the rage…<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":24,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[900],"tags":[411,26,194,1507],"class_list":["post-280100","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-featured","tag-bangladesh","tag-cnmi","tag-house-bill","tag-saipan-mayor"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.saipantribune.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/280100","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.saipantribune.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.saipantribune.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.saipantribune.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/24"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.saipantribune.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=280100"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.saipantribune.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/280100\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.saipantribune.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=280100"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.saipantribune.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=280100"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.saipantribune.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=280100"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}