To celebrate “pride month,” downtown Taipei once again transformed into a huge rainbow burst of music, dancing and cheering yesterday, as tens of thousands of lesbian, gay, bisexual and transgender (LGBT) people and their supporters proudly marched at the 14th Taiwan LGBT Pride parade (台灣同志遊行), one of Asia’s largest LGBT events.
With this year’s theme, “Fun together — honor diversity, like you mean it” (一起Fun出來—打破「假友善」，你我撐自在), organizers called on the public to break through “fake friendliness” when it comes to LGBT people.
“From gender stereotypes and HIV stigmas to sexual exploitation, this fake friendly attitude is only a cover that conceals discrimination,” wrote the organizers.
Photo: Paul Cooper, Taipei Times
Statements such as “I respect homosexuals, but they shouldn’t violate traditional family values” may not seem harmful, but do in fact express a discriminatory attitude.
“Such statements make discrimination subtler and more difficult to detect,” the organizers wrote.
LEE’S HATE SPEECH
Photo: Chien Jung-fong, Taipei Times
A typical example of such “fake friendliness” are the words recently uttered by Taiwanese actor Mark Lee (李天柱) at the 51st Golden Bell Awards (金鐘獎) in Taipei early this month.
“I don’t hate gay people. I love them, and I also have compassion for them. But I have to say that [being gay] is wrong,” Lee said.
The Christian actor flaunted his true colors backstage when he launched a homophobic rant after winning a Golden Bell Award for best actor in a miniseries or television film.
“I’ll be open about it. I don’t support homosexuality because it’s going to lead to the destruction of humanity and that of the nation,” Lee said.
Lee has rejected several gay-themed TV productions that have approached him. “I won’t betray my faith just for a little money. This is wrong. Homosexuality is a huge curse to our future generations,” the actor said, adding, as though we didn’t get it the first time: “What a curse.”
Lee says he is compassionate about difference, but his words are nothing but hate speech wrapped up in “fake friendliness.” Naturally, his remarks have caused outrage both at home and abroad — a reverse kind of “pride of Taiwan” (台灣之光).
It is worth noting that Lee made the remarks during an interview with Good TV (好消息電視台), a Christian-focused TV station funded by Gabriel Broadcasting Foundation (加百列福音傳播基金會), which targets a Christian audience.
“Lee’s offensive remarks are just the tip of the iceberg,” said social activist Jennifer Lu (呂欣潔) on Thinking-Taiwan (想想台灣), an online forum. “The massive amounts of money and power behind certain religious figures and TV stations, and their lack of understanding of LGBT people is what we face every day.”
A TEACHER’S DEATH
Following Lee’s outburst, the LGBT community was shocked to learn of the alleged suicide of French teacher Jacques Picoux, a tragedy that once again highlighted the woefully inadequate legal protection of same-sex couples.
Picoux moved to Taiwan in 1979 and taught at National Taiwan University until he retired in 2004. His same-sex partner Tseng Ching-chao (曾敬超), with whom he lived for 35 years, was the global agent for Chinese actress Gong Li (鞏俐).
Following Tseng’s death in October last year due to cancer, Picoux feel into a deep depression. Two weeks ago he allegedly jumped from the 10th floor of his apartment building.
The media reported that the couple had bought the apartment together under Tseng’s name. Against Tseng’s wishes, his brother inherited the property because, according to the Civil Code (民法), Picoux was “unrelated” to Tseng.
“They were ‘legal strangers’ (法律上的陌生人) after living together for 35 years,” wrote Lee Yen-jong (李晏榕), a lawyer and Picoux’s former student, on her Facebook page. “Despite their 35 years together, they were trampled by others just because they were not in a formal marital relationship,” the lawyer added, revealing that Picoux was not allowed to make any medical decisions for Tseng when he fell ill.
The case of Picoux and Tseng, and remarks by Mark Lee, are not the first of their kind, and certainly won’t be the last. The good news is that, on the eve of the gay parade, some legislators have announced a draft amendment to the Civil Code to legalize same-sex marriage. A total of 38 lawmakers from all parties except the People First Party have already signed it to support the draft bill. Could Taiwan be the first in Asia to legalize same-sex marriage? Taipei Watcher will discuss this more next month.
June 2 to June 8 Taiwan’s woodcutters believe that if they see even one speck of red in their cooked rice, no matter how small, an accident is going to happen. Peng Chin-tian (彭錦田) swears that this has proven to be true at every stop during his decades-long career in the logging industry. Along with mining, timber harvesting was once considered the most dangerous profession in Taiwan. Not only were mishaps common during all stages of processing, it was difficult to transport the injured to get medical treatment. Many died during the arduous journey. Peng recounts some of his accidents in
“Why does Taiwan identity decline?”a group of researchers lead by University of Nevada political scientist Austin Wang (王宏恩) asked in a recent paper. After all, it is not difficult to explain the rise in Taiwanese identity after the early 1990s. But no model predicted its decline during the 2016-2018 period, they say. After testing various alternative explanations, Wang et al argue that the fall-off in Taiwanese identity during that period is related to voter hedging based on the performance of the Democratic Progressive Party (DPP). Since the DPP is perceived as the guardian of Taiwan identity, when it performs well,
The Taiwan People’s Party (TPP) on May 18 held a rally in Taichung to mark the anniversary of President William Lai’s (賴清德) inauguration on May 20. The title of the rally could be loosely translated to “May 18 recall fraudulent goods” (518退貨ㄌㄨㄚˋ！). Unlike in English, where the terms are the same, “recall” (退貨) in this context refers to product recalls due to damaged, defective or fraudulent merchandise, not the political recalls (罷免) currently dominating the headlines. I attended the rally to determine if the impression was correct that the TPP under party Chairman Huang Kuo-Chang (黃國昌) had little of a
A short walk beneath the dense Amazon canopy, the forest abruptly opens up. Fallen logs are rotting, the trees grow sparser and the temperature rises in places sunlight hits the ground. This is what 24 years of severe drought looks like in the world’s largest rainforest. But this patch of degraded forest, about the size of a soccer field, is a scientific experiment. Launched in 2000 by Brazilian and British scientists, Esecaflor — short for “Forest Drought Study Project” in Portuguese — set out to simulate a future in which the changing climate could deplete the Amazon of rainfall. It is
RSS