The 15th annual Taipei lesbian, gay, bisexual and transgender (LGBT) Pride Parade yesterday drew about 123,000 participants, according to organizers’ estimates, hitting a new record since it was first held in 2003.
At about 1pm yesterday, paraders flooded toward the event’s main stage on Ketagalan Boulevard with 160 attending groups — including the American Institute in Taiwan and 12 groups from Japan and South Korea — divided into nine groups marching along three different routes.
The western route proceeded on Gongyuan Road (公園路), the northern on Zhongshan S Road (中山南路) and the southern on Xinyi Road (信義路).
Photo: Peter Lo, Taipei Times
After a two-hour parade from 2:30pm to 4:30pm, revelers returned to the boulevard for musical performances and group speeches until about 7:30pm.
Photo: EPA-EFE/David Chang
Event organizer Taiwan LGBT Pride Community used the event to promote sex education, saying students should have access to diversified education about different sexual orientations and gender differences.
When people are familiar with different sexual orientations across the spectrum, they will be less likely to discriminate against others who are different from themselves, Taiwan Gender Equity Education Association spokesperson Chuang Shu-ching (莊淑靜) said.
The Council of Grand Justices on May 24 announced its constitutional interpretation of the Civil Code, saying that it is unconstitutional to deny same-sex couples the right to marry and called on lawmakers to amend the code within two years.
Photo: Peter Lo, Taipei Times
The two-year period can be painfully long for many same-sex couples, Green Party Taiwan member Jia Bo-kai (賈伯楷) said, adding that some of his friends have passed away before winning the right to be married.
The Democratic Progressive Party (DPP) is deferring marriage equality legislation because it wants to cater to both supporting and opposition camps, Jia said.
“The DPP does not even have the ability to ‘harvest’ the issue even though the council has paved the way,” he said.
Photo: Reuters/Tyrone Siu
Marriage Equality Platform spokesperson Jennifer Lu (呂欣潔) called on the government to speed up same-sex marriage legislation, adding that the equality of all citizens should come before what the opposition groups call “solidarity.”
Marta Bulawa, a 23-year-old Polish woman joining the parade for the first time with her European friends, said marriage means “security” for gay people.
Loren Letourneau, a 37-year-old Canadian with two children, said sexual orientation is not a choice, but a natural disposition, and he would teach his children to be safe no matter their sexual orientation.
At 4pm yesterday, Premier William Lai (賴清德) wrote on Facebook that the Executive Yuan would follow the constitutional interpretation to propose a bill about same-sex marriage soon.
Meanwhile, both the Happiness of the Next Generation Alliance (Happiness Alliance) and the Alliance of Taiwan Religious Groups for the Protection of the Family (Family Alliance) issued statements in response to the parade’s call for wider sex education.
Gay rights advocates often reduce sex education to merely sexual acts, while students should be protected from such an “improper sex education,” the Happiness Alliance said.
Same-sex marriage advocates have distorted school education by instilling wrong information into students, the Family Alliance said, adding that gay people should not be involved in sex education.
AGING: As of last month, people aged 65 or older accounted for 20.06 percent of the total population and the number of couples who got married fell by 18,685 from 2024 Taiwan has surpassed South Korea as the country least willing to have children, with an annual crude birthrate of 4.62 per 1,000 people, Ministry of the Interior data showed yesterday. The nation was previously ranked the second-lowest country in terms of total fertility rate, or the average number of children a woman has in her lifetime. However, South Korea’s fertility rate began to recover from 2023, with total fertility rate rising from 0.72 and estimated to reach 0.82 to 0.85 by last year, and the crude birthrate projected at 6.7 per 1,000 people. Japan’s crude birthrate was projected to fall below six,
Conflict with Taiwan could leave China with “massive economic disruption, catastrophic military losses, significant social unrest, and devastating sanctions,” a US think tank said in a report released on Monday. The German Marshall Fund released a report titled If China Attacks Taiwan: The Consequences for China of “Minor Conflict” and “Major War” Scenarios. The report details the “massive” economic, military, social and international costs to China in the event of a minor conflict or major war with Taiwan, estimating that the Chinese People’s Liberation Army (PLA) could sustain losses of more than half of its active-duty ground forces, including 100,000 troops. Understanding Chinese
US President Donald Trump in an interview with the New York Times published on Thursday said that “it’s up to” Chinese President Xi Jinping (習近平) what China does on Taiwan, but that he would be “very unhappy” with a change in the “status quo.” “He [Xi] considers it to be a part of China, and that’s up to him what he’s going to be doing, but I’ve expressed to him that I would be very unhappy if he did that, and I don’t think he’ll do that. I hope he doesn’t do that,” Trump said. Trump made the comments in the context
SELF-DEFENSE: Tokyo has accelerated its spending goal and its defense minister said the nation needs to discuss whether it should develop nuclear-powered submarines China is ramping up objections to what it sees as Japan’s desire to acquire nuclear weapons, despite Tokyo’s longstanding renunciation of such arms, deepening another fissure in the two neighbors’ increasingly tense ties. In what appears to be a concerted effort, China’s foreign and defense ministries issued statements on Thursday condemning alleged remilitarism efforts by Tokyo. The remarks came as two of the country’s top think tanks jointly issued a 29-page report framing actions by “right-wing forces” in Japan as posing a “serious threat” to world peace. While that report did not define “right-wing forces,” the Chinese Ministry of Foreign Affairs was
RSS