A three-day May forum in Hong Kong sought to look beyond the challenges of adoption and surrogacy among LGBTQI parents, and explore commonalities in the experience of raising "rainbow families."

Gay Star News covered the Asia-Pacific-wide event, which was hosted by organisations including non-profit Planet Ally.

"How we as a society define 'family' sets the stage and communicates a message for how the most vulnerable people in our communities are treated," Planet Ally founder and director Bess Hepworth told Gay Star News. "When we allow the definition of family to be severely limited, it means that children in all the other kinds of families are not protected, not valued, not counted and not acknowledged."

 Main themes covered in the forum included advocacy, interfaith dialogue, and confronting intersex issues.
 
Fifty-four-year-old Ymania Brown from Samoa told Gay Star News that she attended the Asia-Pacific Rainbow Families Forum to build stronger relationships within the regional community.
 
"In the Pacific, you are only as strong as the other links in your woven baskets. If those links are not there, you cannot have a basket,' she said. "Everything we do is about that woven basket that we use for fishing, for raising families, for cleaning, for feeding, for life!'