Banishing homophobia
Carol Nichols is patently forthright in her opposition to the teaching of sexual education in Taiwan’s schools (Letter, May 15, page 8). In fact, she feels that “within the educational school system, the less emphasis on the entire subject of sexuality, the better, at least until students reach high school.” Moreover, in this regard, Nichols maintains that “emphasis on sexual diversity issues is not the business of public education.”
Nichols is correct in asserting that homosexuality “differs from the norm.”
It is true that in all human societies, homosexuality is not the statistical norm. However, this does not mean that homosexuality is — in any sense of the word — “abnormal.” For example, in the US, there are some people with red hair and green eyes — two traits that are outside of the statistical norm. And yet I have never heard of red-haired, green-eyed people being referred to as “abnormal.” These two traits (along with homosexuality) are but two examples of the wonderful and marvelous diversity found in nature.
With her very careful writing style, Nichols does a very good job at covering up her homophobia.
However, her words belie this when she writes: “Although the current proposal stipulates that it [teaching about homosexuality] should begin at the fifth-grade level in Taiwan, the door would be open to lowering the age of the children subjected to a homosexual agenda” (the italics are mine).
First, by using the metaphor that “door would be open to lowering the age of the children subjected to a homosexual agenda,” Nichols is utilizing what, in rhetoric, is termed the “slippery slope” fallacy. Nichols has absolutely no grounds whatsoever for insinuating that beginning to teach children at the fifth-grade level about diversity in sexual orientation would somehow lead inevitably to progressively younger and younger kids being “subjected to a homosexual agenda.”
This last phrase is not only especially hateful (and hate-filled) and repugnant, it is also groundless and unbecoming of someone who claims to be either a proper parent or a legitimate teacher.
Nichols had better be able to provide documented evidence of this so-called secret “homosexual agenda,” or else she should refrain from pronouncing slurs against a societal minority that has already been unfairly persecuted and victimized.
Michael Scanlon
East Hartford, Connecticut
Editorial standards
It would be nice if your editorial team would pay more attention to the quality and accuracy of your writing. I have been reading your paper on and off for 10 years and although there have been a variety of errors, this is the first time you have actually had an error in a headline on the front page: “Kevin Rudd calls for making Beijing more a part of internation [sic] institutions” (May 05, page 1). Please make more of an effort — it is hard to take a newspaper seriously that cannot find the wherewithal to proof read its front page!
While you are at it, could you please ask your staff writers to check their writing for internal logic? An excerpt from Thursday’s edition serves as an example. In a short piece, “Taiwan up to sixth in competitiveness rankings, IMD says” (May 19, page 1), the reporter, Amy Su, writes that the change in rankings marks “the nation’s best performance for the second consecutive year.” Shortly followed by: “Last year, IMD raised the nation’s ranking by 15 notches to eighth from 23rd in 2009.” This does not make sense. It is illogical to claim a best performance for a consecutive year unless the performance was identical in both years and of course the performance in both years was the best of all time as well.
Call me picky, but if your paper cannot report simple numbers accurately, how can it be relied on at all?
It is a shame that your newspaper routinely suffers these basic problems.
However, if it is any consolation, your competitors are worse, and so I will keep reading yours in the hope of seeing some improvement.
BEN ADAMS
New Taipei City
Chinese agents often target Taiwanese officials who are motivated by financial gain rather than ideology, while people who are found guilty of spying face lenient punishments in Taiwan, a researcher said on Tuesday. While the law says that foreign agents can be sentenced to death, people who are convicted of spying for Beijing often serve less than nine months in prison because Taiwan does not formally recognize China as a foreign nation, Institute for National Defense and Security Research fellow Su Tzu-yun (蘇紫雲) said. Many officials and military personnel sell information to China believing it to be of little value, unaware that
Before 1945, the most widely spoken language in Taiwan was Tai-gi (also known as Taiwanese, Taiwanese Hokkien or Hoklo). However, due to almost a century of language repression policies, many Taiwanese believe that Tai-gi is at risk of disappearing. To understand this crisis, I interviewed academics and activists about Taiwan’s history of language repression, the major challenges of revitalizing Tai-gi and their policy recommendations. Although Taiwanese were pressured to speak Japanese when Taiwan became a Japanese colony in 1895, most managed to keep their heritage languages alive in their homes. However, starting in 1949, when the Chinese Nationalist Party (KMT) enacted martial law
“Si ambulat loquitur tetrissitatque sicut anas, anas est” is, in customary international law, the three-part test of anatine ambulation, articulation and tetrissitation. And it is essential to Taiwan’s existence. Apocryphally, it can be traced as far back as Suetonius (蘇埃托尼烏斯) in late first-century Rome. Alas, Suetonius was only talking about ducks (anas). But this self-evident principle was codified as a four-part test at the Montevideo Convention in 1934, to which the United States is a party. Article One: “The state as a person of international law should possess the following qualifications: a) a permanent population; b) a defined territory; c) government;
The central bank and the US Department of the Treasury on Friday issued a joint statement that both sides agreed to avoid currency manipulation and the use of exchange rates to gain a competitive advantage, and would only intervene in foreign-exchange markets to combat excess volatility and disorderly movements. The central bank also agreed to disclose its foreign-exchange intervention amounts quarterly rather than every six months, starting from next month. It emphasized that the joint statement is unrelated to tariff negotiations between Taipei and Washington, and that the US never requested the appreciation of the New Taiwan dollar during the
RSS