Rights activists and Democratic Progressive Party (DPP) lawmakers yesterday hailed the Legislative Yuan’s decision to officially begin the review of a bill to legalize same-sex marriage, and urged their colleagues to support the bill.
“This is a good start, but also a test of Taiwan’s democracy because diversity and equality should be maintained and protected in a democratic society,” DPP Legislator Cheng Li-chun (鄭麗君) told a news conference after the legislature unanimously voted to refer amendments to the Civil Code to allow people of the same sex to be married to be further discussed by the Judiciary and Organic Laws and Statutes Committee.
“The law should protect human rights, not become a source of discrimination, and everyone — regardless of their sexual orientation — should have the right to form a family,” she said.
She also urged Chinese Nationalist Party (KMT) lawmakers to join the “campaign for equal rights.”
No KMT lawmaker endorsed the bill.
“People who are opposed to same-sex marriage claim that the bill may encourage more people to become gay, but that is not true,” DPP Legislator Yu Mei-nu (尤美女) said.
“No heterosexual person would suddenly turn into a homosexual just because same-sex marriage is legalized,” she said.
“Studies show that at least 10 percent of the population is gay, and they are entitled to rights granted to everyone by the Constitution. We should not pretend that they do not exist,” Yu said.
Taiwan Alliance to Promote Civil Partnership Rights president Victoria Hsu (許秀雯) said that a truly non-discriminatory society is one in which parents would no longer worry when they learn that their children are gay.
An essay competition jointly organized by a local writing society and a publisher affiliated with the Chinese Communist Party (CCP) might have contravened the Act Governing Relations Between the People of the Taiwan Area and the Mainland Area (臺灣地區與大陸地區人民關係條例), the Mainland Affairs Council (MAC) said on Thursday. “In this case, the partner organization is clearly an agency under the CCP’s Fujian Provincial Committee,” MAC Deputy Minister and spokesperson Liang Wen-chieh (梁文傑) said at a news briefing in Taipei. “It also involves bringing Taiwanese students to China with all-expenses-paid arrangements to attend award ceremonies and camps,” Liang said. Those two “characteristics” are typically sufficient
A magnitude 5.9 earthquake that struck about 33km off the coast of Hualien City was the "main shock" in a series of quakes in the area, with aftershocks expected over the next three days, the Central Weather Administration (CWA) said yesterday. Prior to the magnitude 5.9 quake shaking most of Taiwan at 6:53pm yesterday, six other earthquakes stronger than a magnitude of 4, starting with a magnitude 5.5 quake at 6:09pm, occurred in the area. CWA Seismological Center Director Wu Chien-fu (吳健富) confirmed that the quakes were all part of the same series and that the magnitude 5.5 temblor was
The brilliant blue waters, thick foliage and bucolic atmosphere on this seemingly idyllic archipelago deep in the Pacific Ocean belie the key role it now plays in a titanic geopolitical struggle. Palau is again on the front line as China, and the US and its allies prepare their forces in an intensifying contest for control over the Asia-Pacific region. The democratic nation of just 17,000 people hosts US-controlled airstrips and soon-to-be-completed radar installations that the US military describes as “critical” to monitoring vast swathes of water and airspace. It is also a key piece of the second island chain, a string of
The Central Weather Administration has issued a heat alert for southeastern Taiwan, warning of temperatures as high as 36°C today, while alerting some coastal areas of strong winds later in the day. Kaohsiung’s Neimen District (內門) and Pingtung County’s Neipu Township (內埔) are under an orange heat alert, which warns of temperatures as high as 36°C for three consecutive days, the CWA said, citing southwest winds. The heat would also extend to Tainan’s Nansi (楠西) and Yujing (玉井) districts, as well as Pingtung’s Gaoshu (高樹), Yanpu (鹽埔) and Majia (瑪家) townships, it said, forecasting highs of up to 36°C in those areas
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