For Chi Chia-wei (祁家威), an imminent court decision that could make Taiwan the first place in Asia to recognize same-sex marriage is his greatest shot at justice after decades of tireless campaigning.
“It has been so long, my hair has gone gray,” said the 59-year-old Chi, who often appears in public draped in rainbow flags.
The celebrated advocate, who has led the nation’s gay rights movement for nearly 30 years, is to know on Wednesday next week whether his battle for marriage equality has been won when the Council of Grand Justices rules on his latest petition.
Photo: AFP
At the center of the case is a clause in the Civil Code which stipulates that an agreement to marry should be made between a man and a woman.
Chi wants the court to rule on whether that part of the code contravenes elements in the Constitution which guarantee equality and freedom of marriage.
The decision is binding, so a ruling in his favor would pave the way for same-sex unions to be legalized.
Chi says he is optimistic, but his excitement is tempered by the length of time it has taken to get this far.
“This should have happened long ago. It’s belated justice,” he said.
Chi is one of two petitioners bringing the case.
The other is the Taipei City Government, which is seeking clarification as authorities have been rejecting applications for same-sex marriages based on the Civil Code clause.
This time there is much more public momentum for change — in December last year, a pro-marriage equality rally drew 250,000 people, according to organizers, Chi said.
“It was just a one-man campaign when I started — now I have 250,000 people beside me. I am not alone in doing what is right,” Chi said.
He was raised by liberal-minded parents supportive of his sexual orientation, who encouraged him to fight for his beliefs. He came out to friends at high school and said he was surprised by how accepting they were.
After starting out as a rights advocate for people with HIV and AIDS, Chi became a full-time advocate for gay rights after meeting his partner 29 years ago.
However, while he might have had support from his family and peers, outspoken Chi has had numerous run-ins with the authorities.
In 1986, when the nation was still under martial law, Chi said he was imprisoned for five months after submitting his first petition asking for gay marriage to be recognized.
The charges linked him with a robbery and were entirely fabricated, he said.
Since then, his appeals for a change in the marriage law have been rejected by government agencies and courts, including a failed petition to the Council of Grand Justices in 2001.
“I was not discouraged by the setbacks. That is how I have been able to carry on for so long,” Chi said. “My belief is that if you can do one right thing in this life, it’s all worth it.”
A lack of support in the legislature has also stalled the gay marriage debate.
However, campaigners were given new hope when President Tsai Ing-wen (蔡英文) was elected last year and openly supported marriage equality.
With her Democratic Progressive Party in the majority, the Legislative Yuan passed the first draft of a bill to legalize gay marriage in December last year and it is due for a second reading later this year.
Chi said those who are against him accuse him of “spreading heresy” and attention-seeking.
They belittle his relationship with his partner, comparing it to children playing house, he says.
“I am not doing this for my own interests,” Chi said. “My partner and I are an old couple now and getting married is not a priority for us, but other gay couples need legal protection.”
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
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
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