The Equal Rights Referendum Group yesterday submitted to the Central Election Commission the signatures it has gathered for two referendum questions that, if approved by the commission, would be tied to the Nov. 24 nine-in-one local elections.
The two referendum proposals are on gender equality education and same-sex marriage, said Social Democratic Party (SDP) member Miao Po-ya (苗博雅), who is the group’s convener.
The same-sex marriage referendum proposal received more than 550,000 signatures, while the gender equality education referendum proposal received more than 450,000, Miao said.
Photo: CNA
However, due to time constraints, the group was only able to submit 500,000 and 400,000 signatures respectively, Miao added.
The referendum questions would be the greatest challenge ever for Taiwan’s same-sex movement, SDP member and Marriage Equality Platform convener Jennifer Lu (呂欣潔) said.
They would need at least 5 million to 7 million votes each to pass, Lu said.
“We hope to advance Taiwanese democratic values and allow those who love each other to form their own families, but we do not want the referendums to become a war between different sectors of society,” Lu said.
“We call on supporters to try to persuade their friends and family in the remaining 81 days until the election,” Lu said.
“Let us prove our worth and value, and choose what future for Taiwan we want with our votes in the referendum,” Lu added.
Veteran gay rights advocate Chi Chia-wei (祁家威) voiced support for the proposals, saying that they were short at least 220,000 signatures because of those who have committed suicide due to discrimination against the LGBT community.
Anti-LGBT referendum questions are “sugar-coated poison,” Chi said, adding the language of the questions is paradoxical.
The Happiness of the Next Generation Alliance anti-same-sex marriage group on Tuesday last week submitted three referendum proposals to the commission after collecting more than 600,000 signatures for each.
The three referendum proposals, if passed, would ask voters if the definition of marriage should be restricted to a union between a man and a woman; if same-sex education should be confined to high-school levels and beyond; and whether the right of same-sex couples to live together should be protected through ways that do not require amending the Civil Code.
FOSSIL CLUES: The bushfires resulted from a positive Indian Ocean dipole event, when the region east of the ocean becomes drier, professor Shen Chuan-chou said The bushfires that swept through Australia last year were connected to a phenomenon known as the Indian Ocean dipole (IOD), which is expected to become more frequent due to climate change, a geologist studying coral fossils said yesterday. National Taiwan University Department of Geosciences professor Shen Chuan-chou (沈川洲) since 2001 has been working with Australian and US researchers to study climate systems in the Indian Ocean. Led by Australian National University Research School of Earth Sciences professor Nerilie Abram, the team published a paper on IOD in the journal Nature on March 9. The bushfires resulted from a positive IOD event, when the
Senior judges yesterday met to discuss the constitutionality of a law that makes adultery a criminal offense, before being ordered by Judicial Yuan President Hsu Tzong-li (許宗力) to set a date for a constitutional interpretation within the next month. The judges met to discuss Article 239 of the Criminal Code on offenses against marriage and family, after 18 judges had called for a constitutional interpretation of the issue. Taipei District Court Judge Lin Meng-huang (林孟皇) said that while he had previously tried adultery cases and never questioned the law, his feelings changed when trying a case last year involving baseball star Wang
Instead of hating the Chinese Nationalist Party (KMT), help change it, KMT Chairman Johnny Chiang (江啟臣) said, as he urged young people to join efforts to reform the party. As the nation marked Youth Day on Sunday, Chiang said in a Facebook post that he wanted to remind people that “the KMT used to be very young.” Now, when people think of the KMT, they equate it with older people, he wrote. “Even if [the KMT] is a 100-year-old party, it must maintain a young mentality, and understand what young people want and what they want the KMT to do,” Chiang wrote.
A survey has found that 37.3 percent of transgender people in the nation have experienced gender-related discrimination or bullying in the workplace, the Taiwan Alliance to Promote Civil Partnership Rights said yesterday. The alliance’s survey showed that 55.41 percent of transgender people said that they had been afraid to use a public restroom, 18.53 percent had been harassed or attacked in public, while 15.83 percent had been afraid to ask a police officer or other professional for help. The survey, conducted from March 14 to Wednesday last week, was based on 518 valid responses from transgender people aged 14 to 78, the
RSS