With rainbow flags, colorful signs and outlandish costumes, Taiwan’s gays, lesbians, bisexuals, transgenders, transvestites and their supporters will march through downtown Taipei tomorrow in the Chinese-speaking world’s largest annual pride parade.
Though it may look and feel like a carnival, Taiwan LGBT Pride is also a serious platform for the country’s lesbian, gay, bisexual and transgender communities to raise awareness for a variety of human rights issues and show the country’s leaders that their support cannot be taken for granted.
“The best thing about the event is that it unites the LGBT groups and gives us a reason to work together despite differences,” said Wang Ping (王蘋), secretary general of the Gender/Sexuality Rights Association in Taiwan (台灣性別人權協會).
The parade has been renamed Taiwan LGBT Pride this year, a move organizers hope will reaffirm that the event is a platform for not only gays and lesbians but also for the bisexual and transgender communities.
“One of this year’s themes is to recognize and respect the diversity and differences within our communities,” said William Shen, president of the Taiwan Tongzhi Hotline Association (同志諮詢熱線協會), who gives his name as Gofyy (喀飛) when speaking to the media and addressing government committees.
“Last year at the parade, each time when the organizers chanted, ‘We are homosexuals!’ we would follow by saying, ‘We are bisexuals!’ After a while, they were like, ‘Oh! That’s right. We are gays, bisexuals and transgenders,’” said Chen Lo-wei (陳洛葳), a founder of Bi the Way, the country’s first and only bisexual group.
“It was a significant moment for us because for the very first time, we were seen,” Chen said.
Taiwan LGBT Pride has grown from a humble gathering of 500 participants in 2003 to a series of simultaneous marches consisting of more than 1,500 paradegoers last year.
One aim of this year’s event is to use the LGBT community’s growing power to encourage politicians to change outdated laws that impinge on human rights. These include: Article 29 of the Anti-Sexual Business Provisions for Children and Teenagers (兒童及青少年性交易防治條例), which makes the act of posting Web messages that hint at exchanging money for sex punishable; Article 235 of the Criminal Code, which criminalizes the distribution, sale and public display of indecent writing, images, or other; and Article 80 of the Social Order Maintenance Law (社會秩序維護法), which punishes people found guilty of soliciting sex in a public place, but not those who visit prostitutes.
Activists say politicians now recognize the gay community when elections approach and express support for gay rights to woo voters. But with a few notable exceptions — such as Hsiao Bi-khim (蕭美琴), Cheng Yun-peng (鄭運鵬) and Cheng Li-wun (鄭麗文) — politicians from the Democratic Progressive Party (DPP) and Chinese Nationalist Party (KMT) seem to forget their promises once they take office.
The basic human-rights law (人權基本法) recognizing same-sex marriage that was drafted during Chen Shui-bian’s (陳水扁) term, for example, was never passed by the Legislature. The Taipei government-sponsored LGBT Civil Rights Movement (台北同玩節) initiated during President Ma Ying-jeou’s (馬英九) term as Taipei City mayor has seen its annual budget cut this year.
For this year’s parade, organizers originally devised a route through Taipei’s western quarter, where most central governmental offices are located. The procession was planned to terminate in front of the Presidential Office so that demonstrators could voice their political views.
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