When the rain began to fall on their parade, countless rainbow umbrellas went up as 82,000 lesbian, gay, bisexual, and transgender (LGBT) people and supporters marched in the 14th Taiwan LGBT Pride parade (台灣同志遊行) in Taipei on Oct. 29, once again setting a new record for one of Asia’s largest LGBT events.
In response to their call, the Democratic Progressive Party (DPP), Chinese Nationalist Party (KMT) and New Power Party (NPP) all proposed draft amendments to the Civil Code (民法) to legalize same-sex marriage.
On Nov. 8, many cheered as the draft bills proposed by DPP Legislator Yu Mei-nu (尤美女) and KMT Legislator Jason Hsu (許毓仁) passed their first reading at the Legislative Yuan. They were then sent to the legislature’s Judiciary and Organic Laws and Statutes Committee for a review, and will become law if they can clear the second and third readings.
Photo: Fang Pin-chao, Taipei Times
The proposals aim to revise, among other things, wording that specifies marriage as an agreement made by “male and female parties,” proposing to instead say “two parties.”
DELAY OF REVIEW
As Taiwan is one step closer to marriage equality, anti-LGBT religious groups are making every effort to block the legislation. On the day of the committee’s review, the Happiness of the Next Generation Alliance (下一代幸福聯盟) organized another anti-LGBT protest to surround the Legislative Yuan.
Photo: CNA
“Save the family!” read the placards held by the protesters, who shouted slogans such as “homosexuality is contagious,” “each gay has 1,000 sex partners” and “legalizing same-sex marriage is [no different than] legalizing orgies.” The situation became even more chaotic when dozens of protesters broke into the Legislative Yuan to interrupt the review, demanding that more public hearings be held.
Despite the organizer’s attempt to portray the rally as a non-religious affair, the active mobilization of the Alliance of Taiwan Religious Groups for the Protection of the Family (護家盟) and a handful of Christian groups made it abundantly clear that religious groups were behind the event.
The organizer claimed that many young people joined the protest voluntarily. The Student Union for Marriage Equality (同學陣), however, revealed that Fu Jen Catholic University student Shih Chun-yu (施俊宇) wrote in an ad on his Facebook page that attending the protest was a “great part-time job opportunity” for students, because they could receive hourly subsidies higher than the government’s minimum hourly pay.
Shih was responsible for mobilizing young participants for the rally. He serves as the chair of the university’s Faith, Hope and Love Club (信望愛社). Although he quickly removed the post, whether those young people joined the protest voluntarily is doubtful, and the source of the so-called subsidies is suspicious.
SCUFFLES BREAK OUT
On the day of the protest, scuffles broke out inside the legislature when KMT lawmakers, led by notorious anti-gay caucus whip Liao Kuo-tung (廖國棟), tried to block the committee’s review.
The KMT demanded that the legislature freeze the review until it has held 30 public hearings across Taiwan, although the Legislative Yuan and Ministry of Justice have already held dozens of public hearings.
Due to the KMT’s boycott, Yu, a convener of the committee, was forced to compromise by aborting the review and holding two public hearings by the end of this year.
“They are calling for more public hearings just to delay the review... The LGBT people have been waiting for years, and how many more years do they have to wait?” Yu said at the committee after the review was delayed.
As expected, the first of the two public hearings held on Thursday was chaotic and fueled by hate speech and groundless accusations from discriminatory representatives recommended by the KMT.
“Men’s sexual organs are created for women, and vice versa. The world will perish if we think our sexual organs belong to us,” said Hsu Hui-chen (許惠珍), a section chief of the Family Federation for World Peace and Unification (世界和平統一家庭聯合會), at the public hearing.
A FAIR REVIEW
Meanwhile, some Christian groups are using fear to stir up their followers, who call their legislators en masse, effectively blocking their phones and paralyzing their offices, pressuring them to withdraw their signatures from the draft bills.
They even spent millions of New Taiwan Dollars to run advertisements on the front pages of Taiwan’s four major newspapers, trying to mislead the public by distorting the content of the draft bills, claiming that this would collapse family structure and encourage children to have sex. But the costly front-page hate ads actually exposed the massive “religion-and-money” collusion behind them.
The Taiwan International Association for Gay Rights (台灣國際同志權益促進會) held a press conferences on Wednesday, saying that the Bread of Life Christian Church (靈糧堂) and Truth Lutheran Church (真理堂) may have violated the Charity Donations Destined for Social Welfare Funds Implementation Regulations (公益勸募條例) for running those newspaper ads, because running such ads for a political purpose is not a “religious activity” defined by the law.
“The purpose of the public hearings is to communicate with each other,” Yu said in response to the opposition of those Christian groups. “It is hoped that all sides can put aside their biases and squarely face the LGBT issue with utmost sincerity,” she added.
Yu is quite right. Taiwan has debated the issue for about 30 years, and it’s time for some constructive dialogue. Let’s have a full and fair review of the bills, so we can handle this rationally and in a timely manner.
May 23 to May 29 After holding out for seven years, more than 250 Yunlin-based resistance fighters were finally persuaded to surrender in six separate ceremonies on May 25, 1902. The Japanese had subdued most of the Han Taiwanese within six months of their arrival in 1895, but intermittent unrest continued — in Yunlin, the Tieguoshan (鐵國山) guerillas caused the new regime much headache through at least 1901. These surrender ceremonies were common and usually conducted peacefully, but the Japanese had different plans for these troublemakers. Once the event concluded, they gunned down every single attendee with machine guns. Only Chien Shui-shou
The toll rolls on. A gunman walks into a place where humans are peacefully gathering and slaughters them for a militantly-avowed racially-based nationalism, presented in a long manifesto. We are quickly told that the gunman was mentally ill. Obviously — who but a madman could do such a thing? The newspapers dust off one of their “education of a killer” pieces, change the names and run another 1,200 words useful only to those cultivating such killers. The latest of these attacks, on Taiwanese churchgoers in Laguna, California, has spurred much discussion of the long record of Chinese Nationalist Party (KMT) violence
Producing the world’s meat has rarely been this expensive. In southern Calgary, Don Lowe, who’s been a cattle rancher for 40 years, had hoped to expand his herd of 800 beef cows this year, but with feed prices skyrocketing, he’s struggling to hang on to the animals he has. Across the ocean in East Yorkshire, England, pig farmer Kate Moore says the upkeep of her 32,000-strong herd is becoming exceedingly hard. “It’s horrendous,” said Moore, who is now is chalking up a loss of about £60 (US$75) per animal because of the soaring cost of feeding and taking care of them. “There’s
Household appliances contain plastic components. Medical devices made of sterile plastic, such as disposable syringes and plasma bags, are indispensable to 21st-century healthcare. By preventing bruising and contamination, plastic packaging reduces food waste. Plastic cups and dishes are less fragile than ceramic tableware. PVC pipes and window frames have made house-building cheaper. But not everyone who benefits from this wonder material knows that plastics production requires huge amounts of energy, most of which is generated by burning fossil fuels. Plastics plants are also a source of harmful pollutants including benzene. Nor do all consumers appreciate the extent to which plastic