Led by pop diva Chang Hui-mei (張惠妹), also known as A-mei (阿妹), 37 artists took part in a benefit concert at Taipei Arena at the beginning of this month to show support for the lesbian, gay, bisexual and transgender (LGBT) community.
The concert, Love is King. It Makes Us All Equal (愛最大), was organized to raise funds for the Taiwan Alliance to Promote Civil Partnership Rights (伴侶盟), which advocates legalizing same-sex marriage. The 10,000 tickets sold out within a minute, and millions of New Taiwan Dollars were donated to the alliance via ticket sales.
The strong show of support sent a clear message to the government. However, in the face of Asian’s biggest pro-LGBT concert in terms of the number of artists contributing to it, President Tsai Ing-wen (蔡英文) and her administration has yet to take any concrete actions.
Photo courtesy of Outstanding Production
LGBT VARIETY SHOW
Meanwhile, LGBTalk Show (TA們說) — Taiwan’s first gay-themed variety show — received positive feedback after it premiered on YouTube on Thursday last week (www.youtube.com/watch?v=NzjwSRR5RuU).
The weekly variety show is co-hosted by gay rights activist Kristy Chu (曲家瑞) and entertainers Hero Tai (戴祖雄), William Liao (廖威廉) and Simon Xue (薛仕凌), who goes by the stage name MC40. The first episode received tens of thousands of views on the day of its release, and a new episode will air at 10pm every Thursday.
Photo: CNA
Despite the show’s popularity, TV stations have refused to carry it because they are concerned that some of the issues it may tackle could be sensitive or controversial, reported online news outlet ETtoday (東森新聞雲).
As these cases — and countless others — show, the central government and some media continue to euphemize the issue by appealing to a largely fictitious demographic that might be offended by the protection of LGBT people’s human rights.
However, quite a few cities and counties throughout the nation are taking the initiative to protect the LGBT community. The Taichung City Government’s ban on the barbaric practice of conversion therapy serves as a good example. The city’s Health Bureau issued a document on May 13 stating that medical institutions are prohibited from using the controversial treatment.
CONVERSION THERAPY BANNED
According to Shader Liu (劉信詮), a member of Taichung’s Gender Equality Committee, the policy was made because homosexuality is not an illness and therefore the practice is not necessary. Liu added that the pseudo-scientific therapy could lead to domestic violence, psychological trauma and even suicide.
“Conversion therapy used to be an ethical issue. Now it’s a legal issue,” Liu said, adding that any group — medical, civil or religious — practicing the treatment in Taichung is violating the Physicians Act (醫師法) and the Psychologists Act (心理師法).
Taichung’s committee is making a request for the Ministry of Health and Welfare to make the new rule applicable nationwide, so as to eliminate the treatment. From the pro-LGBT concert and online variety show to Taichung’s sensible policy, the call for the equal rights of LGBT people is loud and clear. What is the central government waiting for?
The problem with Marx’s famous remark that history repeats itself, first as tragedy, the second time as farce, is that the first time is usually farce as well. This week Chinese Nationalist Party (KMT) Chair Cheng Li-wun (鄭麗文) made a pilgrimage to the People’s Republic of China (PRC) “to confer, converse and otherwise hob-nob” with Chinese Communist Party (CCP) officials. The visit was an instant international media hit, with major media reporting almost entirely shorn of context. “Taiwan’s main opposition leader landed in China Tuesday for a rare visit aimed at cross-strait ‘peace’”, crowed Agence-France Presse (AFP) from Shanghai. Rare!
What is the importance within the Chinese Nationalist Party (KMT) of the meeting between Xi Jinping (習近平), the leader Chinese Communist Party (CCP), and Cheng Li-wun (鄭麗文), the leader of the KMT? Local media is an excellent guide to determine how important — or unimportant — a news event is to the public. Taiwan has a vast online media ecosystem, and if a news item is gaining traction among readers, editors shift resources in near real time to boost coverage to meet the demand and drive up traffic. Cheng’s China trip is among the top headlines, but by no means
Sunflower movement superstar Lin Fei-fan (林飛帆) once quipped that the Democratic Progressive Party (DPP) could nominate a watermelon to run for Tainan mayor and win. Conversely, the DPP could run a living saint for mayor in Taipei and still lose. In 2022, the DPP ran with the closest thing to a living saint they could find: former Minister of Health and Welfare Chen Shih-chung (陳時中). During the pandemic, his polling was astronomically high, with the approval of his performance reaching as high as 91 percent in one TVBS poll. He was such a phenomenon that people printed out pop-up cartoon
A recent report from the Environmental Management Administration of the Ministry of Environment highlights a perennial problem: illegal dumping of construction waste. In Taoyuan’s Yangmei District (楊梅) and Hsinchu’s Longtan District (龍潭) criminals leased 10,000 square meters of farmland, saying they were going to engage in horticulture. They then accepted between 40,000 and 50,000 cubic meters of construction waste from sites in northern Taiwan, charging less than the going rate for disposal, and dumped the waste concrete, tile, metal and glass onto the leased land. Taoyuan District prosecutors charged 33 individuals from seven companies with numerous violations of the law. This
RSS