The death of Jacques Picoux, a retired French language and literature university lecturer and long-term Taipei resident who fell from his 10th-floor apartment on Sunday, has rekindled the online debate over the administration’s promise on same-sex marriage.
While the administration is still finding its way, it should start to take steps, however small, to implement its pledges for gender and sexual orientation equality.
President Tsai Ing-wen’s (蔡英文) pre-election support for the legalization of same-sex marriage was remembered after the 67-year-old Picoux’s death.
Online speculation has been rife that his death was a suicide, linking the date to the first anniversary of the death of his long-term partner, Tseng Ching-chao (曾敬超), from cancer in October last year.
Picoux and Tseng had lived with for 35 years without legal recognition. However, the need for same-sex marriage was palpably felt when Picoux could not intervene in the decisions of Tseng’s family about medical treatment for Tseng or their home, which was in Tseng’s name, said former legislative candidate Lee Yen-jong (李晏榕), a former student of Picoux.
Author Chu Hsin-yi (瞿欣怡), who recently published a book about her daily life with her partner of 15 years, Grow Old Together,” criticized Taiwan for “calling itself gay-friendly, but only paying lip-service to supporting gay people while being unwilling to let loose, even a bit, regulations affecting gay rights.”
“It’s simply hypocrisy,” she said, condemning those politicians who have refused to back same-sex marriage due to “considerations of social perception.”
It is hard not to agree with Chu that many politicians are merely paying lip service to gay rights. True, several local governments have allowed same-sex couples to register their partnerships in their household registration, but such moves are purely symbolic, because they have little legal status compared with the fundamental legal protection provided to married heterosexual couples.
However, if the right to marriage equality is what Tsai supports, she must make moves to live up to her promises, be it a non-legally-binding mark on household registration documents or a “same-sex-partners” bill that the Ministry of Justice is mulling, even though it has been criticized as “segregation.”
The Democratic Progressive Party registered a group to walk in the Taiwan LGBT Pride parade on Saturday next week. The party is probably cringing now at the idea of walking with people and groups that doubt its commitment to Tsai’s promises. However, it would be worse if it had not registered at all.
It is what the DPP, now in control of the executive and the legislative branches of government, must squarely face. The government might consider it difficult pass a same-sex marriage bill, which would require an amendment to the Civil Code, but policy campaigning, advocating and education should not wait, especially when it believes that the “social perception” is a determining factor in whether sex and gender equality can be achieved.
One promising sign are Tsai’s nominees to the Council of Grand Justices and heads of the Judicial Yuan. According to a civil group’s review and the recent review hearings at the Legislative Yuan, six of the seven nominees voiced either passive or active support for same-sex marriage.
Former grand justice Hsu Tzong-li (許宗力), the nominee for Judicial Yuan president, said that if homosexuals are proved to be a natural minority who have been misunderstood as abnormal, he would consider laws stating that marriage is only between a man and a woman to be unconstitutional.
While some criticized his stance as vague, others said he has given a clear support for same-sex marriage as there is no proof that homosexuality is abnormal, and he has not denied gays and lesbians the constitutional right to marriage.
A failure by the Chinese Communist Party (CCP) to respond to Israel’s brilliant 12-day (June 12-23) bombing and special operations war against Iran, topped by US President Donald Trump’s ordering the June 21 bombing of Iranian deep underground nuclear weapons fuel processing sites, has been noted by some as demonstrating a profound lack of resolve, even “impotence,” by China. However, this would be a dangerous underestimation of CCP ambitions and its broader and more profound military response to the Trump Administration — a challenge that includes an acceleration of its strategies to assist nuclear proxy states, and developing a wide array
Eating at a breakfast shop the other day, I turned to an old man sitting at the table next to mine. “Hey, did you hear that the Legislative Yuan passed a bill to give everyone NT$10,000 [US$340]?” I said, pointing to a newspaper headline. The old man cursed, then said: “Yeah, the Chinese Nationalist Party [KMT] canceled the NT$100 billion subsidy for Taiwan Power Co and announced they would give everyone NT$10,000 instead. “Nice. Now they are saying that if electricity prices go up, we can just use that cash to pay for it,” he said. “I have no time for drivel like
Twenty-four Chinese Nationalist Party (KMT) lawmakers are facing recall votes on Saturday, prompting nearly all KMT officials and lawmakers to rally their supporters over the past weekend, urging them to vote “no” in a bid to retain their seats and preserve the KMT’s majority in the Legislative Yuan. The Democratic Progressive Party (DPP), which had largely kept its distance from the civic recall campaigns, earlier this month instructed its officials and staff to support the recall groups in a final push to protect the nation. The justification for the recalls has increasingly been framed as a “resistance” movement against China and
Chinese Minister of Foreign Affairs Wang Yi (王毅) reportedly told the EU’s top diplomat that China does not want Russia to lose in Ukraine, because the US could shift its focus to countering Beijing. Wang made the comment while meeting with EU High Representative for Foreign Affairs and Security Policy Kaja Kallas on July 2 at the 13th China-EU High-Level Strategic Dialogue in Brussels, the South China Morning Post and CNN reported. Although contrary to China’s claim of neutrality in the Russia-Ukraine conflict, such a frank remark suggests Beijing might prefer a protracted war to keep the US from focusing on