A referendum proposal to “protect the family” put forward by the anti-gay-marriage Faith and Hope League, was rejected yesterday by the Cabinet’s Referendum Review Committee on the grounds that it failed to meet requirements.
The committee voted 10-1 against the proposal, which would have asked voters if they agreed that Civil Code “family’ items regarding husband-and-wife relationships, consanguinity and the principles of human relations cannot be amended unless the public agrees via a referendum.
The league has been promoting its referendum proposal as part of its efforts against the legalization of same-sex marriage.
Committee chairman Wang Kao-cheng (王高成) said the proposal was rejected for two reasons: one, that the proposed referendum topic was not a law, a legislative principle, important policy or constitutional amendment and therefore does not meet the requirement of the Referendum Act (公民投票法); and two, the proposal was about revising several provisions of the Civil Code, which does not meet the law’s requirement that a referendum should be about a single issue, he said.
The league can file an administrative appeal of the committee’s decision or introduce a new proposal, Wang said.
The Faith and Hope League was founded in September last year.
A group of Taiwanese-American and Tibetan-American students at Harvard University on Saturday disrupted Chinese Ambassador to the US Xie Feng’s (謝鋒) speech at the school, accusing him of being responsible for numerous human rights violations. Four students — two Taiwanese Americans and two from Tibet — held up banners inside a conference hall where Xie was delivering a speech at the opening ceremony of the Harvard Kennedy School China Conference 2024. In a video clip provided by the Coalition of Students Resisting the CCP (Chinese Communist Party), Taiwanese-American Cosette Wu (吳亭樺) and Tibetan-American Tsering Yangchen are seen holding banners that together read:
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Heat advisories were in effect for nine administrative regions yesterday afternoon as warm southwesterly winds pushed temperatures above 38°C in parts of southern Taiwan, the Central Weather Administration (CWA) said. As of 3:30pm yesterday, Tainan’s Yujing District (玉井) had recorded the day’s highest temperature of 39.7°C, though the measurement will not be included in Taiwan’s official heat records since Yujing is an automatic rather than manually operated weather station, the CWA said. Highs recorded in other areas were 38.7°C in Kaohsiung’s Neimen District (內門), 38.2°C in Chiayi City and 38.1°C in Pingtung’s Sandimen Township (三地門), CWA data showed. The spell of scorching