More than 30 homosexual and transgender activists demonstrated early yesterday morning outside the Keelung District Court in support of Gin Gin bookstore owner Lai Jeng-jer (
"No guilt in nudity! The male body is beautiful!" said some of the protesters' banners.
Lai was appearing in court for allegedly selling pornographic material at his store, which deals in homosexual and transgender materials.
PHOTO: YANG PEI-HUA, TAIPEI TIMES
The demonstration was spearheaded by the Taiwan Tongzhi Hotline and performed skits in support of Lai.
At one point, a man and a woman in flesh-colored body suits stood in identical poses while a mock judge wearing "patriarchal/heterosexual spectacles" studied them to decide who was the more "perverse."
The protest remained peaceful for the most part, though a minor dispute occurred when the judges decided to close the hearing to the public.
"The court's official reason for a private hearing was to shield potentially offensive evidence from the public eye," Taiwan Tongzhi Hotline spokesman Ashley Wu (
Besides workers from the Taiwan Tongzhi Hotline, the protesters consisted of the Gin Gin bookstore's customers, members of the Gender/Sexuality Rights Association, a male homosexual student organization at National Taiwan University, and the sexuality research center at National Central University.
The homosexual community has rallied around Lai after more than 500 copies of four magazines were seized by police last August.
"We're optimistic," Lai said after his court appearance. "We have faith that Taiwan's justice system will give us homosexuals our due."
The military has spotted two Chinese warships operating in waters near Penghu County in the Taiwan Strait and sent its own naval and air forces to monitor the vessels, the Ministry of National Defense (MND) said. Beijing sends warships and warplanes into the waters and skies around Taiwan on an almost daily basis, drawing condemnation from Taipei. While the ministry offers daily updates on the locations of Chinese military aircraft, it only rarely gives details of where Chinese warships are operating, generally only when it detects aircraft carriers, as happened last week. A Chinese destroyer and a frigate entered waters to the southwest
A magnitude 6.1 earthquake struck off the coast of Yilan County at 8:39pm tonight, the Central Weather Administration (CWA) said, with no immediate reports of damage or injuries. The epicenter was 38.7km east-northeast of Yilan County Hall at a focal depth of 98.3km, the CWA’s Seismological Center said. The quake’s maximum intensity, which gauges the actual physical effect of a seismic event, was a level 4 on Taiwan’s 7-tier intensity scale, the center said. That intensity level was recorded in Yilan County’s Nanao Township (南澳), Hsinchu County’s Guansi Township (關西), Nantou County’s Hehuanshan (合歡山) and Hualien County’s Yanliao (鹽寮). An intensity of 3 was
Instead of focusing solely on the threat of a full-scale military invasion, the US and its allies must prepare for a potential Chinese “quarantine” of Taiwan enforced through customs inspections, Stanford University Hoover fellow Eyck Freymann said in a Foreign Affairs article published on Wednesday. China could use various “gray zone” tactics in “reconfiguring the regional and ultimately the global economic order without a war,” said Freymann, who is also a nonresident research fellow at the US Naval War College. China might seize control of Taiwan’s links to the outside world by requiring all flights and ships entering or leaving Taiwan
The next minimum wage hike is expected to exceed NT$30,000, President William Lai (賴清德) said yesterday during an award ceremony honoring “model workers,” including migrant workers, at the Presidential Office ahead of Workers’ Day today. Lai said he wished to thank the awardees on behalf of the nation and extend his most sincere respect for their hard work, on which Taiwan’s prosperity has been built. Lai specifically thanked 10 migrant workers selected for the award, saying that although they left their home countries to further their own goals, their efforts have benefited Taiwan as well. The nation’s industrial sector and small businesses lay
RSS