Democratic Progressive Party (DPP) presidential candidate Tsai Ing-wen (蔡英文) on Friday voiced her support for marriage equality, a day before the annual gay pride parade in Taipei. Some have viewed it as a step forward from the support of civil partnerships she announced during her previous presidential campaign, but some considered it merely paying lip service, as there was no promise of substantive moves such as legislation.
The rainbow flag of LGBT pride and diversity has recently become a well-known icon in Taiwan, thanks to the efforts of various activist groups’ long-standing effort and pop star Chang Hui-mei’s (張惠妹, A-mei) vociferous support for the community — her concert at the Taipei Arena this year saw a 30m by 60m rainbow flag unfurled over the audience.
Another key factor was probably the surge in Facebook profile pictures covered in rainbow colors after the US Supreme Court ruled in June that same-sex marriages were legal nationwide.
Tsai’s team has been tapping the heavily charged rainbow motif for her campaign, selling MRT EasyCards printed with Tsai’s campaign logo (a circle in various shades of green, the DPP’s color) as a fundraiser; the 18,000 sets sold out in 15 minutes after going on sale online on Oct. 15.
The building housing Tsai’s national campaign headquarters was lit with six colored beams before Saturday’s gay pride parade, which in another show of support saw the DPP officially participate in the march for the first time.
Tsai’s presidential campaign has been progressive in its responsiveness in the form of policy platforms toward minority groups such as Aborigines and Southeast Asian immigrants. However, Tsai has been hesitant to make concrete promises to the LGBT community in terms of legislation, which is the clearest hurdle facing the gay rights movement.
While one of the DPP’s slogans for the Jan. 16 presidential and legislative elections has been “legislative majority” — which would be a first in Taiwan’s history if achieved — the passage of a marriage equality bill, if truly endorsed by the DPP, should clearly be on the party’s political agenda.
Despite being the first presidential candidate to voice support for the “idea” of marriage equality, Tsai on Saturday was more non-committal or elusive when fielding questions from reporters about such a bill. Without giving a clear “yes” or “no,” Tsai said it was “something that society needs to tackle together as a whole, in which some are supportive while others are more reserved.”
However, that is simply falling back on the “social consensus as a requirement” rhetoric that the government has used to defer related discussion. For example, the Ministry of Justice conducted an online vote from August to last month on public receptiveness toward same-sex marriage, but said that the results were “for reference only” when the poll found about 60 percent of respondents were in favor of it.
Some of the DPP lawmakers who are now making the biggest show of support for the bill once told legislative officials that the issues of rights and equality should not be subjected to majoritarianism.
One day after the 2011 gay pride parade, which with more than 50,000 participants had been the nation’s biggest so far, a 13-year-old boy committed suicide by jumping off a building at his school after being teased for years over his “feminine traits.”
A proactive stance by the government and legal institutions could serve as a bulwark against misguided biases and prejudices, which are rarely eradicated by a show of hands.
Because much of what former US president Donald Trump says is unhinged and histrionic, it is tempting to dismiss all of it as bunk. Yet the potential future president has a populist knack for sounding alarums that resonate with the zeitgeist — for example, with growing anxiety about World War III and nuclear Armageddon. “We’re a failing nation,” Trump ranted during his US presidential debate against US Vice President Kamala Harris in one particularly meandering answer (the one that also recycled urban myths about immigrants eating cats). “And what, what’s going on here, you’re going to end up in World War
Earlier this month in Newsweek, President William Lai (賴清德) challenged the People’s Republic of China (PRC) to retake the territories lost to Russia in the 19th century rather than invade Taiwan. He stated: “If it is for the sake of territorial integrity, why doesn’t [the PRC] take back the lands occupied by Russia that were signed over in the treaty of Aigun?” This was a brilliant political move to finally state openly what many Chinese in both China and Taiwan have long been thinking about the lost territories in the Russian far east: The Russian far east should be “theirs.” Granted, Lai issued
On Tuesday, President William Lai (賴清德) met with a delegation from the Hoover Institution, a think tank based at Stanford University in California, to discuss strengthening US-Taiwan relations and enhancing peace and stability in the region. The delegation was led by James Ellis Jr, co-chair of the institution’s Taiwan in the Indo-Pacific Region project and former commander of the US Strategic Command. It also included former Australian minister for foreign affairs Marise Payne, influential US academics and other former policymakers. Think tank diplomacy is an important component of Taiwan’s efforts to maintain high-level dialogue with other nations with which it does
On Sept. 2, Elbridge Colby, former deputy assistant secretary of defense for strategy and force development, wrote an article for the Wall Street Journal called “The US and Taiwan Must Change Course” that defends his position that the US and Taiwan are not doing enough to deter the People’s Republic of China (PRC) from taking Taiwan. Colby is correct, of course: the US and Taiwan need to do a lot more or the PRC will invade Taiwan like Russia did against Ukraine. The US and Taiwan have failed to prepare properly to deter war. The blame must fall on politicians and policymakers