Loving Parents of LGBT Taiwan — an organization for parents of lesbian, gay, bisexual and transgender people — was officially inaugurated yesterday and immediately called on society and the government to be more tolerant toward the LGBT community and for an equal rights bill.
“Gays are just like everyone else, they have parents, like us, and they, as well as their parents, pay taxes just like every citizen of this country — so they should enjoy the same rights as everybody else,” said the group’s convener, who was identified only as Mrs Kuo (郭), at a news conference at the Legislative Yuan to announce the group’s founding.
“The kids don’t get to choose whether they are gay, bi, or straight. It is not a choice because they are born that way, and 10 percent of all people could be gay,” she said.
Photo: Liu Hsin-de, Taipei Times
Kuo said that as a parent, she feels that insults to gay people are insults to their parents as well, adding that well-structured sexual equality education was the key to ending discrimination.
Her daughter came out to her at age 15.
She said it was hard for her at first to accept the fact that her daughter was a lesbian, but she learned to accept it.
“Many people may think it’s hard to make your parents accept that you love someone of your own gender, which is why less than 30 percent of the LGBT population ‘come out of the closet’ to their parents,” Kuo said. “But based on our own experience, most parents are willing to accept the fact when their kids make an effort to communicate with their parents.”
One of the missions of the Loving Parents of LGBT Taiwan was to help gay children talk to their parents about their sexual orientation and help parents to accept their children for who they are.
Another woman, surnamed Chen (陳), who has a daughter who is a lesbian, said it took her a year to accept the fact after her daughter told her.
“At first, it was really hard to accept, it was something quite heartbreaking for me,” Chen said. “I went out to look for help to understand homosexuality; I talked to the Taiwan Tongzhi Hotline Association and other gay rights advocacy groups.”
“I gradually realized that the way I worried about my daughter being lesbian was no different from the way I worried about her schoolwork or her health. All of a sudden, I didn’t see it as such a big deal anymore, it’s just one of those issues you run into as your kid grows up,” she said.
Chen said she was worried about her daughter’s sexual orientation not so much because of her orientation, but because “I’m worried about the discrimination she will suffer all her life.”
Therefore, social acceptance is the key to a better life for LGBT people and their families, Chen said.
Elias Tzeng (曾恕敏), a former minister at the Tong-kwang Light House Presbyterian Church — a church serving the LGBT population — criticized homophobic Christians and churches.
“Jesus Christ always approached those being exploited, repressed, marginalized and considered ‘unclean’ in Jewish society 2,000 years ago,” Tzeng said. “By discriminating against gays, some Christians are doing the same things that were done 2,000 years ago.”
China has reserved offshore airspace in the Yellow Sea and East China Sea from March 27 to May 6, issuing alerts usually used to warn of military exercises, although no such exercises have been announced, the Wall Street Journal (WSJ) reported yesterday. Reserving such a large area for 40 days without explanation is an “unusual step,” as military exercises normally only last a few days, the paper said. These alerts, known as Notice to Air Missions (Notams), “are intended to inform pilots and aviation authorities of temporary airspace hazards or restrictions,” the article said. The airspace reserved in the alert is
NAMING SPAT: The foreign ministry called on Denmark to propose an acceptable solution to the erroneous nationality used for Taiwanese on residence permits Taiwan has revoked some privileges for Danish diplomatic staff over a Danish permit that lists “Taiwan” as “China,” Eric Huang (黃鈞耀), head of the Ministry of Foreign Affairs’ Department of European Affairs, told a news conference in Taipei yesterday. Reporters asked Huang whether the Danish government had responded to the ministry’s request that it correct the nationality on Danish residence permits of Taiwanese, which has been listed as “China” since 2024. Taiwan’s representative office in Denmark continues to communicate with the Danish government, and the ministry has revoked some privileges previously granted to Danish representatives in Taiwan and would continue to review
More than 6,000 Taiwanese students have participated in exchange programs in China over the past two years, despite the Mainland Affairs Council’s (MAC) “orange light” travel advisory, government records showed. The MAC’s publicly available registry showed that Taiwanese college and university students who went on exchange programs across the Strait numbered 3,592 and 2,966 people respectively. The National Immigration Agency data revealed that 2,296 and 2,551 Chinese students visited Taiwan for study in the same two years. A review of the Web sites of publicly-run universities and colleges showed that Taiwanese higher education institutions continued to recruit students for Chinese educational programs without
China has reserved offshore airspace over the Yellow Sea and East China Sea from March 27 to May 6, issuing alerts that are usually used to warn of military exercises, although no such exercises have been announced, the Wall Street Journal (WSJ) reported on Sunday. Reserving such a large area for 40 days without explanation is an “unusual step,” as military exercises normally only last a few days, the paper said. The alerts, known as notice to air missions (NOTAMs), “are intended to inform pilots and aviation authorities of temporary airspace hazards or restrictions,” the article said. The airspace reserved in the alert
RSS