also interpreted to disallow same-sex marriages. Many other articles of the same law also assume the marriage is a heterosexual union. The National People's Congress proposed legislation allowing same-sex marriages in 2003. However, the proposal failed to collect the 30 votes needed to be added to the agenda. On 5 January 2016, a court in Changsha agreed to hear a lawsuit against the Bureau of Civil Affairs of Furong District for its June 2015 refusal to let a gay man marry his partner. On 13 April 2016, the court ruled against the couple. They vowed to appeal, citing the importance of his case for LGBT progress in China. Currently, Beijing will grant spousal visas to same-sex couples. These documents allow foreign same-sex married couples to live in China, though only one member of the couple may work. Hong Kong The right to marry in Hong Kong is a constitutionally protected right. The Basic Law, the city's constitutional charter, does not define marriage as between a man and a woman, but the Marriage Ordinance does. Under Section 40 of the Marriage Ordinance (Cap. 181), marriage shall be a "Christian marriage or the civil equivalent of a Christian marriage"; and this "implies a formal ceremony recognized by law as involving the voluntary union for life of one man and one woman to the exclusion of all others ". Therefore, same-sex couples are excluded from the legal institution of marriage, along with the benefits of marriage. In 2004 and 2013, under the UK Civil Partnership Act 2004 and Marriage (Same Sex Couples) Act 2013 respectively, British Nationals including Hong Kong residents holding BN(O) status already have the right to register as civil partners and get married with their same sex partners, under the UK law. However, the British consulate in Hong Kong does not perform consular civil partnerships or same-sex marriage due to the "strong objections" the HKSAR government raised with the British consulate-general, as apparently UK law prohibits embassies and consulates from performing consular marriages if objection is raised by the local government. In 2009, changes to Hong Kong's Domestic and Cohabitation Relationships Ordinance were made to protect same-sex partners. On 13 May 2013, the Court of Final Appeal, in a 4:1 decision, gave transgender people the right to marry as their identified gender rather than their biological sex at birth, but only in biologically heterosexual relationships (i.e., a transgender woman could