Academics are accusing the government of basic human rights violations after the Ministry of the Interior (MOI) earlier this year stripped a transgender couple of their legally married status, in a case that raises fundamental questions about the meaning of marriage.
Prior to getting married in October, Abbygail Wu (吳伊婷), 27, and her partner, Jiyi Wu (吳芷儀), 29, obtained the necessary papers by registering with government authorities to obtain their marriage certificate. In their application, Jiyi Wu applied as the “husband” in the couple, while Abbygail Wu did so as the “wife.”
Two months earlier, the Wus had undergone sex changes, or “gender reassignment surgery,” to tranform them from men into women. However, when earlier this year Jiyi Wu applied for legal status as a woman, the Taipei City Household Registration Office noticed some “irregularities” and turned to the city’s Department of Civil Affairs, which in turn requested input from the ministry.
In the end, the ministry revoked the marriage certificate and stated that marriage can only occur between a man and a woman.
Chiu Ming-tang (邱銘堂), an official with the Ministry of Justice (MOJ), said the Council of Grand Justices’ Constitutional Interpretations, the Civil Code and rulings by the High Court on marriage-related cases supported the MOI’s view that under the current system, the definition of marriage is based on the prerequisite of the union of one male and one female.
For cases where a person involved has gender recognition issues, the MOI uses the date of the conclusion of reassignment surgery as the legal standard for defining the gender of an individual, Chiu said.
The legality of a marriage comes after such a distinction is made, Chiu said.
The deputy director of the MOI’s Department of Household Registration Affairs, Su Ching-chao (蘇清朝), said that based on the MOJ’s definition, the Wus had completed their gender reassignment prior to registering their marriage, and that under the Civil Code, both were considered female and their marriage was therefore invalid.
Jiyi Wu sees things otherwise.
“In the eyes of government officials, gender is far more important than the value of marriage and family,” Jiyi Wu told reporters last week.
Backed by Democratic Progressive Party Legislator Cheng Li-chun (鄭麗君), the Wus have called on the government to reverse its “illegal” decision and are threatening to take legal action by July 23 if the annulment is upheld.
They say they will ask the Supreme Court to explain why a legally recognized marriage can be “illegally revoked” by the government — a decision that could very well be a precedent in Taiwan.
Weighing in on the ministry’s decision last week, Chen Chao-yu, associate professor of law at National Taiwan University, told Gay Star News that the government had no legal grounds to cancel the marriage registration, a move that she described as “a violation of due process.”
Chen added that the ministry’s interpretation of marriage as strictly between a man and a woman, or husband and wife, was also open to debate.
Furthermore, despite the sex reassignment, the Wus remain the same individuals who met all the criteria to get legally married last year, Josephine Ho (何春蕤), a sexologist at National Central University, told the Liberty Times (the Taipei Times’ sister paper).
Ho said that the fact that changes in the Wus’ identity cards could be used post-facto to nullify their legal relationship reflected “institutional and regulatory contradictions in the law, from which no citizen should suffer.”
Chen said that there was a precedent to the case, when the government in 1994 continued to recognize as legal a union that became “homosexual” after the husband legally changed his gender.
If the Wus win, it would mean that people in Taiwan are free to change their legal gender after marriage and that the country has adopted de facto same-sex marriage, she said.
Additional reporting by Jake Chung, with CNA
China might accelerate its strategic actions toward Taiwan, the South China Sea and across the first island chain, after the US officially entered a military conflict with Iran, as Beijing would perceive Washington as incapable of fighting a two-front war, a military expert said yesterday. The US’ ongoing conflict with Iran is not merely an act of retaliation or a “delaying tactic,” but a strategic military campaign aimed at dismantling Tehran’s nuclear capabilities and reshaping the regional order in the Middle East, said National Defense University distinguished adjunct lecturer Holmes Liao (廖宏祥), former McDonnell Douglas Aerospace representative in Taiwan. If
Prosecutors in New Taipei City yesterday indicted 31 individuals affiliated with the Chinese Nationalist Party (KMT) for allegedly forging thousands of signatures in recall campaigns targeting three Democratic Progressive Party (DPP) lawmakers. The indictments stem from investigations launched earlier this year after DPP lawmakers Su Chiao-hui (蘇巧慧) and Lee Kuen-cheng (李坤城) filed criminal complaints accusing campaign organizers of submitting false signatures in recall petitions against them. According to the New Taipei District Prosecutors Office, a total of 2,566 forged recall proposal forms in the initial proposer petition were found during the probe. Among those
ECHOVIRUS 11: The rate of enterovirus infections in northern Taiwan increased last week, with a four-year-old girl developing acute flaccid paralysis, the CDC said Two imported cases of chikungunya fever were reported last week, raising the total this year to 13 cases — the most for the same period in 18 years, the Centers for Disease Control (CDC) said yesterday. The two cases were a Taiwanese and a foreign national who both arrived from Indonesia, CDC Epidemic Intelligence Center Deputy Director Lee Chia-lin (李佳琳) said. The 13 cases reported this year are the most for the same period since chikungunya was added to the list of notifiable communicable diseases in October 2007, she said, adding that all the cases this year were imported, including 11 from
The Ma-anshan Nuclear Power Plant’s license has expired and it cannot simply be restarted, the Executive Yuan said today, ahead of national debates on the nuclear power referendum. The No. 2 reactor at the Ma-anshan Nuclear Power Plant in Pingtung County was disconnected from the nation’s power grid and completely shut down on May 17, the day its license expired. The government would prioritize people’s safety and conduct necessary evaluations and checks if there is a need to extend the service life of the reactor, Executive Yuan spokeswoman Michelle Lee (李慧芝) told a news conference. Lee said that the referendum would read: “Do
RSS