As President Tsai Ing-wen (蔡英文) put it following protests staged by a large crowd of opponents of same-sex marriage outside the Legislative Yuan yesterday, all people should stand equal before love and be granted the freedom to pursue their own happiness.
Yesterday would have marked the closest Taiwan has ever gotten to becoming the first Asian country to legalize same-sex marriage as lawmakers gathered to engage in committee review of a number of amendments to the Civil Code aimed at legitimizing homosexual unions, a proposal which has received support from the Democratic Progressive Party (DPP)-led government and across party lines.
Unfortunately, the protest by people opposed to gay marriage has once again threatened to draw the nation back into an outdated and homophobic hinterland, despite the growing public support for legalization of same-sex marriage among Taiwanese, especially among young people.
According to a Taiwan Thinktank poll released shortly after the draft amendments passed their first readings earlier this month, the public remains divided on the issue of legalization of same-sex marriage, with 47.8 percent of respondents supporting the passage of the draft bills and 41.7 percent opposed.
Nevertheless, the public’s support for the issue is inversely proportional to age, as evidenced by social support for making same-sex marriage legal being highest among respondents in the 20-to-29 demographic, at 71.2 percent.
The figures indicate that support for the legitimization of same-sex partnerships is destined to grow with time.
Despite being on the wrong side of history, the protesters against gay marriage, as well as the Chinese Nationalist Party (KMT) legislative caucus, yesterday demanded that more public hearings be held on the issue. Apparently the three public hearings that the legislature has held on the matter and the five that the Ministry of Justice have held are not enough.
It was wise of the DPP caucus to reject their demand, given that such public hearings have been deemed unproductive rather than democratic by supporters of same-sex marriage, as most of the meetings were disrupted by discriminatory and negative comments.
At the hearings, critics of the draft bills equated homosexuality with pedophilia, denounced same-sex marriage as violating public order and good morals, and said that only the union of one man and one woman is blessed by God.
It was also claimed that as both have maternal instincts, a lesbian couple might become competitive when raising children, and that this could have a negative influence on the child, and that as homosexual relationships, according to the anti-gay protesters, encourage infidelity, the bonds between couples tend to be unstable, which is detrimental to children.
The protesters could do even more damage with their call for a referendum on the legalization of gay marriage. The rationale behind such a call is that issues concerning marriage and the family should be decided by the entire population rather than by lawmakers.
Granting homosexual unions the same legal protections and rights as those afforded to heterosexual couples does not in any way undermine the benefits currently enjoyed by the latter. Why would the union of two people in love require the approval of the entire population?
As a petition recently initiated by religious groups to support same-sex marriages states: “We should make acceptance, justice and liberty guaranteed by law, while recognizing that there is the possibility of introducing a plurality of definitions regarding the traditional views on sexual orientation and gender recognition.” This is the direction our nation needs to move toward.
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