Watching her boisterous twin toddlers romp around the living room, Hope Chen said she worries what would happen to them if she ever fell seriously ill or had an accident.
In a worst-case scenario, it should be her partner of seven years who would look after them, Chen said, but they are not both recognized as legal guardians because they are gay and cannot marry.
Chen, 37, gave birth using eggs from her partner, Zoro Wen. She had to travel to Thailand for IVF, which is only allowed in Taiwan for married couples.
Photo: AFP
“I’m the mother who gave birth, so I’m the only legal parent,” said Chen, 37, from the family’s Taoyuan apartment, where a floor-to-ceiling bookcase includes the title Why do you have two moms?
“For her, even though they have blood relations, she has no parental rights,” Chen said.
Men in an unmarried heterosexual relationship can still gain guardianship of their children through adoption — an option which is also not available to Chen and Wen.
The couple hopes things will soon change as the government debates amendments to the Civil Code that would make Taiwan the first place in Asia to legalize same-sex marriage.
However, while support for marriage equality has gained momentum since pro-gay rights President Tsai Ing-wen (蔡英文) came to power in May, so too have resisting voices, revealing a divided society deeply rooted in traditional family values.
Both sides have staged large-scale rallies in the past month, attracting tens of thousands, ahead of a critical second review of three draft bills for marriage equality tomorrow.
The first review last month, held by a parliamentary vetting committee — to decide on one version to put forward to the legislature — ended without consensus as thousands of protesters criticized the lack of public participation in drafting the bills.
“There is now such a high expectation for the dream to be realized. You cannot bring it crashing down, can you?” Yu Mei-nu (尤美女), a Democratic Progressive Party (DPP) lawmaker who proposed one of the bills, said in an interview referring to opponents of reform.
Taiwan is one of the region’s most forward-thinking societies when it comes to gay rights, hosting a gay pride parade that draws tens of thousands every year.
Still, past attempts to legalize same-sex marriage stalled under the then-Chinese Nationalist Party (KMT), which dominated politics for decades before being unseated by the DPP in this year’s elections.
A recent poll by think tank Taiwanese Public Opinion Foundation shows the public is evenly split on the issue.
Mother-of-three Becky Wu, who is the head of a parents’ union of Taipei elementary schools, said she is concerned that changes to the Civil Code would change what she sees as fundamentals in society.
“Our basic morals and concepts, ancestry, grandmother, grandfather, mother, father — all those will disappear,” she said. “It becomes the rights of the minority over the rights of the majority.”
“In the past, kids were taught men and women have sex because they love each other and marry,” she said. “Now they are told love is not a prerequisite and they are free to experiment, either with men or women.”
Religious groups remain the staunchest critics of equal marriage, with an alliance of Buddhist, Taoist and Christian organizations issuing a statement last month warning of destruction to social ethics and traditional family values.
Some opponents suggest a separate new law should be made covering same-sex unions, rather than changing the law to become gender neutral, as is proposed.
However, equal marriage rights advocates said that would lead to segregation, and would not support the rest of the lesbian, gay, bisexual and transgender community.
The Civil Code should be made completely gender neutral to cover bisexual and transgender people as well, said Victoria Hsu (許秀雯), a lawyer who leads campaign group Taiwan Alliance to Promote Civil Partnership Rights.
“Everyone is a citizen, so why can’t we use the civil law to marry?” Hsu said.
For Chen, the lack of legal recognition meant her partner was not allowed into the operating room when she was about to undergo a difficult caesarean section.
It was also a complicated process to list their children as insurance policy beneficiaries to Wen, a doctor who is the main breadwinner in the family, Chen said.
However, to the twins, there is nothing questionable about the difference in their family. They call Chen ma-mi and Wen ah-bi — a family name they conjured.
“They are very clear that other families are ba-ba and ma-ma, while we are ma-mi and ah-bi,” Chen said. “They have naturally accepted that is the way our family is.”
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:
UNAWARE: Many people sit for long hours every day and eat unhealthy foods, putting them at greater risk of developing one of the ‘three highs,’ an expert said More than 30 percent of adults aged 40 or older who underwent a government-funded health exam were unaware they had at least one of the “three highs” — high blood pressure, high blood lipids or high blood sugar, the Health Promotion Administration (HPA) said yesterday. Among adults aged 40 or older who said they did not have any of the “three highs” before taking the health exam, more than 30 percent were found to have at least one of them, Adult Preventive Health Examination Service data from 2022 showed. People with long-term medical conditions such as hypertension or diabetes usually do not
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
POLICE INVESTIGATING: A man said he quit his job as a nurse at Taipei Tzu Chi Hospital as he had been ‘disgusted’ by the behavior of his colleagues A man yesterday morning wrote online that he had witnessed nurses taking photographs and touching anesthetized patients inappropriately in Taipei Tzu Chi Hospital’s operating theaters. The man surnamed Huang (黃) wrote on the Professional Technology Temple bulletin board that during his six-month stint as a nurse at the hospital, he had seen nurses taking pictures of patients, including of their private parts, after they were anesthetized. Some nurses had also touched patients inappropriately and children were among those photographed, he said. Huang said this “disgusted” him “so much” that “he felt the need to reveal these unethical acts in the operating theater