The Faith and Hope League, a new Christian-focused political party, yesterday said that its referendum petition drive for a national vote on “family protection” has garnered more than 150,000 signatures in less than 30 days, crossing the 100,000-signature threshold needed for a referendum proposal.
The petition asks that any amendment to the Civil Code on marriage, parents and children, custody and family, which concern the “husband-wife relationship, consanguinity and familial ethics,” not be passed without first being put to a national vote.
The petition is seen as a counterproposal to calls for changes to the wording of the Civil Code that could pave the way for recognition of same-sex marriages.
The league said the marriage and family system is “crucial to future generations’ welfare and kinship, while consanguinity is the keystone of a nation’s development.”
“While collecting petition signatures and interacting with the public, our staff found that most people have no idea that an amendment to the Civil Code regarding marriage being a union between one man and one woman has been discussed in the legislature, while some said that ‘diverse family formation’ is only about same-sex marriage and could not accept the idea after further understanding what three draft bills of ‘diverse family formation’ are about,” the group said.
The draft bills cover same-sex marriage, a partnership system and a non-biologically related family system.
The league said a referendum is the only chance for such significant issues to be openly discussed.
“While only same-sex marriage has been proposed among the three bills, the issues that have not been discussed also have support from parties and politicians,” it said.
“Over the past few years, social activists have often used words such as ‘diversity,’ ‘equality’ and ‘friendliness’ to disguise extremely radical ideas and positions, forming social pressure through online opinion, which has caused political parties and politicians to bow to them,” the party said.
“The government should have a comprehensive and concrete family policy, a policy that would make the family mainstream,” Faith and Hope League legislator-at-large candidate Fong Pei (馮珮) said.
“It is difficult to call a referendum in Taiwan, as the second-stage threshold requires 1 million signatures, but since we have received about 160,000 in a month, we believe we can cross the million threshold,” league co-chairwoman Joanna Lei (雷倩) said.
The petition drive created controversy earlier this month when some petition forms were distributed in elementary and high schools, with one parent saying that the forms were distributed to students to give to their parents.
A group from National Taichung Girls’ Senior High School said on Facebook that some parents were campaigning at the school on a sports day, saying that the ideas put forth in the petition would be good for children, who are being “brainwashed.”
A student newspaper criticized the distribution of the petition to students, saying that while free speech was a right in this nation, it was “outrageous when rights are used to batter the rights of others.”
A proposal by the Taiwan Railways Administration (TRA) to permanently ban sitting in Taipei Railway Station’s main hall has received a mixed reaction online, with some social media users vowing to launch a sit-in at the station. Gatherings at the hall have been prohibited since Feb. 29 in accordance with the Central Epidemic Command Center’s policy of reducing crowd sizes in public places. A Facebook user organizing the sit-in said that the hall is a public space and there is no legitimate reason to ban sitting on the floor. He said he suspected that the proposal was made due to business considerations and
Chinese over-the-top (OTT) service provider iQiyi cannot register as a provider in Taiwan after the Mainland Affairs Council declared it to be an illegal service, the National Communications Commission (NCC) said yesterday. Both iQiyi and WeTV were deemed to be illegal Chinese OTT operators in an interdepartmental meeting on Friday last week, officials said, adding that this prohibits them from marketing their services in Taiwan or seeking subscribers. The government plans to block a local server that iQiyi has been using to transmit content to domestic audiences, which would disrupt its content transmission. OTT Entertainment Ltd, which is enlisted by iQiyi to
The Taipei Grand Mosque yesterday said its earlier decision to cancel Eid al-Fitr celebrations on Sunday to mark the end of the Muslim holy month of Ramadan would stand, even though there have been no new domestic cases of COVID-19 in more than a month. It will be the first time in 60 years that the event has not be held at the mosque. The Ministry of Labor had asked all mosques to suspend Eid al-Fitr celebrations and prayers this year, due to COVID-19 concerns, and encouraged Muslims to pray at home. This year Ramadan began on April 23 and is to
KAOHSIUNG VOTE: A city official allegedly wrote a message calling on supporters of Kaohsiung Mayor Han Kuo-yu not to participate in the vote next month Prosecutors on Wednesday initiated an investigation of Kaohsiung Civil Affairs Bureau Director-General Tsao Huan-jung (曹桓榮) for allegedly telling supporters of Kaohsiung Mayor Han Kuo-yu (韓國瑜) to interfere with a recall vote against Han, while pan-green politicians denounced the mayor and his team for devising ways to obstruct voting. After receiving complaints from residents, the Kaohsiung District Prosecutors’ Office launched its probe of Tsao for alleged breaches of the Civil Servants Election and Recall Act (公職人員選舉罷免法). Complainants provided evidence that Tsao on Saturday last week wrote on messaging app Line that Han supporters should not vote in the June 6 recall vote, saying:
RSS