Amendments aimed at legalizing same-sex marriage proposed separately by Chinese Nationalist Party (KMT) Legislator Jason Hsu (許毓仁) and Democratic Progressive Party (DPP) Legislator Yu Mei-nu (尤美女) passed their first readings yesterday.
Following the KMT’s obstruction of legislative proceedings in protest of a proposed amendment to the Labor Standards Act (勞動基準法) — by occupying the speaker’s podium at the floor meeting last week and blocking the first reading of all non-KMT bills, including the New Power Party’s (NPP) same-sex marriage proposal — the legislature yesterday referred the proposed changes to the Civil Code to the Judiciary and Organic Laws and Statutes Committee for review.
The proposals aim to revise, among other things, wording that specifies marriage as an agreement made by “male and female parties,” proposing to instead say “two parties.”
Hsu’s proposal has garnered 16 co-signatories, while Yu’s — which she co-sponsored with five other lawmakers — has the endorsement of 42 other lawmakers.
Fifty-four lawmakers — 37 from the DPP, 11 from the KMT, five from the NPP and one non-partisan legislator — have signed one or more of the proposals.
Passage requires a majority of the 113-seat legislature to approve an amendment, which means at least 57 votes.
It is not the first time a same-sex marriage bill has passed a first reading.
Yu motioned a similar amendment in the previous legislature in October 2013 that passed its first reading and had several public hearings, but never got out of the committee stage.
Hours before the proposals passed their first readings, a group calling themselves members of the “Taiwan Gender Rights Protection and Promotion Association” — a name that in Chinese is only a few characters different from the pro-homosexual Gender/Sexuality Rights Association, Taiwan — protested outside the Legislative Yuan, shouting denunciations against possible amendments to the Civil Code.
The protesters, mostly women holding children, held banners that read: “Protecting our children and education against same-sex marriage.”
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