Any official pronouncement on same-sex marriage by President Tsai Ing-wen (蔡英文) in remarks expected this week will be “meaningless” without a concrete timetable for liberalization, same-sex marriage advocates said yesterday, adding that the Democratic Progressive Party (DPP) has dragged its feet on pushing through reform as the first annual gay pride parade under Tsai’s administration approaches.
“If she sticks to stating she ‘supports’ marriage equality but does not lay out a timetable, it will be obvious that the DPP is not prepared to pass a bill yet,” Taiwan Alliance to Promote Civil Partnership Rights secretary-general Chien Chih-chieh (簡至潔) said. “Civic groups need to open their eyes and realize that the DPP has no plans to throw its weight behind pushing a bill forward.”
The Liberty Times (the Taipei Times’ Chinese-language sister paper) has reported that Tsai plans to make an official statement about same-sex marriage this week, after deciding she could “do more” than simply attending the nation’s annual gay pride march on Saturday.
Tsai said she supported “marriage equality” shortly before last year’s pride march, but civic groups have questioned whether her stance is representative of the DPP as a whole, citing DPP caucus whip Ker Chien-ming’s (柯建銘) opposition to the legalization during the most recent legislative push in 2013.
Ker declined to meet with alliance representatives during last year’s election campaign, and Chien yesterday said they had not sought to meet with DPP caucus leadership since the new legislature was sworn in.
“If Tsai fails to lay out a timeline, we will feel that only a minority of legislators are supportive, and that is not enough,” Chien said, referring to DPP Legislator Yu Mei-nu’s (尤美女) plans to announce a new push to amend the Civil Code next week.
They would watch carefully whether any Chinese Nationalist Party (KMT) members sign Yu’s bill, she said, adding that so far there was no evidence that Yu has been able to realize a promised cross-party alliance to push through reform.
A majority of DPP legislators declined to support same-sex marriage in response to alliance questioning before January’s election, she said, adding that a lack of urgency among the general public had hampered gay rights campaigners’ efforts to promote reform, with many feeling other reforms should take precedence.
“Even many homosexual ‘comrades’ are willing to kick the ball down the road and feel this issue can wait. We obviously do not agree, but when there is this kind of atmosphere throughout society, there is not much space for us to put pressure on politicians,” she said, adding that Tsai’s Ministry of Justice is in the process of organizing hearings on a law for same-sex partnerships — not marriage.
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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