Currently with the adoptions of Same-sex marriage or partnership legislation in several countries, gay rights once again draw much interest and attention from academic circle worldwide. The legal issues around homosexual people and same-sex relationship vary in different parts of world. In essence, these issues are all about the human rights, and gay rights as basic human rights thus deserve all states' action of protection. Based on such a hypothesis, the research aims to detect what's the content and diversity of international human rights law regarding same-sex relationships and what are the exact obligations imposed on states, with a special look at the situation in China. The research starts from the clarification of some basic concepts and the historic involvements of same-sex relationships and sums up three kinds of main same-sex legal issues facing today: Criminalization; Discrimination and the Blindness for same-sex union recognition. Then the legislative and judicial protection and recognition of same-sex relationship are examined at both international or regional level and domestic level in a comprehensive and comparative way. These laws and practices help to prove and conclude that there are emerging customary international human rights laws which support the protection and recognition of the same-sex relationships. At last, the thesis analyzes the same-sex issues in China with the help of the findings from previous parts, and found out that the wording and narration used properly in western world should not be easily applied in the context of China without qualification, as China bears its own characteristics and specialties. When it comes to consider the pathway of legal recognition of same-sex relationship/unions in China, the same-sex marriage is not the best choice and partnership mode should be advocated instead.