Thousands of students have signed a petition for gender equality to be taught in elementary and junior-high schools in an effort to decrease bullying in schoolyards due to the sexual orientation of students.
National Chengchi University student Liao Hao-hsiang (廖浩翔) launched the petition on Wednesday.
The voice of students has been largely ignored — whether as part of Referendum No. 12, one of the referendum questions posed alongside local elections on Nov. 24 last year, or in recent discussions — the signatories said, adding that their voice has been arbitrarily represented by parents or other groups.
Photo: Liao Chen-huei, Taipei Times
Referendum No. 12 — which asked: “Do you agree that the right to persons of the same sex to create a permanent union should be guaranteed by an institution other than marriage as defined by the Civil Code?” — passed with 6,401,748 “yes” votes to 4,072,471 “no” votes.
The use of derogative terms to make fun of or belittle others shows that many students consider those in the LGBT community as inferior, they said.
Teaching materials on understanding and respecting the LGBT community should be neither abolished nor delayed, they said, citing an April 26 incident in which a junior-high school student tried to kill himself by jumping from the fourth floor of his Taichung school after being verbally bullied about his or a family member’s sexual orientation.
The concerns of parents are understandable, but they should trust the educators who review the materials and teach them, they added.
Students would not become homosexuals from learning how to respect others, nor would the teaching entice them to “diversify” their sexual activity, they said.
The students called on the Ministry of Education not to spread disinformation, but to reach out to parents to allay their fears and misunderstandings regarding gender equality in education.
“We hope that misunderstandings and misinformation will not subvert the right of students to learn and will put the brakes on bullying,” the students said.
Liao said she was concerned that as the enforcement rules and same-sex marriage bills are tied together, there is still time before the end of the month to introduce changes that could keep same-sex marriage from being introduced.
Lai called on students to call their legislators, voicing their support for the Executive Yuan version of the same-sex marriage bill and demanding that legislators move to exclude Article 13 of the Enforcement Rules for Gender Equity Education Act (性別平等教育法施行細則) being reviewed.
Former Czech Republic-based Taiwanese researcher Cheng Yu-chin (鄭宇欽) has been sentenced to seven years in prison on espionage-related charges, China’s Ministry of State Security announced yesterday. China said Cheng was a spy for Taiwan who “masqueraded as a professor” and that he was previously an assistant to former Cabinet secretary-general Cho Jung-tai (卓榮泰). President-elect William Lai (賴清德) on Wednesday last week announced Cho would be his premier when Lai is inaugurated next month. Today is China’s “National Security Education Day.” The Chinese ministry yesterday released a video online showing arrests over the past 10 years of people alleged to be
THE HAWAII FACTOR: While a 1965 opinion said an attack on Hawaii would not trigger Article 5, the text of the treaty suggests the state is covered, the report says NATO could be drawn into a conflict in the Taiwan Strait if Chinese forces attacked the US mainland or Hawaii, a NATO Defense College report published on Monday says. The report, written by James Lee, an assistant research fellow at Academia Sinica’s Institute of European and American Studies, states that under certain conditions a Taiwan contingency could trigger Article 5 of NATO, under which an attack against any member of the alliance is considered an attack against all members, necessitating a response. Article 6 of the North Atlantic Treaty specifies that an armed attack in the territory of any member in Europe,
LIKE FAMILY: People now treat dogs and cats as family members. They receive the same medical treatments and tests as humans do, a veterinary association official said The number of pet dogs and cats in Taiwan has officially outnumbered the number of human newborns last year, data from the Ministry of Agriculture’s pet registration information system showed. As of last year, Taiwan had 94,544 registered pet dogs and 137,652 pet cats, the data showed. By contrast, 135,571 babies were born last year. Demand for medical care for pet animals has also risen. As of Feb. 29, there were 5,773 veterinarians in Taiwan, 3,993 of whom were for pet animals, statistics from the Animal and Plant Health Inspection Agency showed. In 2022, the nation had 3,077 pediatricians. As of last
XINJIANG: Officials are conducting a report into amending an existing law or to enact a special law to prohibit goods using forced labor Taiwan is mulling an amendment prohibiting the importation of goods using forced labor, similar to the Uyghur Forced Labor Prevention Act (UFLPA) passed by the US Congress in 2021 that imposed limits on goods produced using forced labor in China’s Xinjiang region. A government official who wished to remain anonymous said yesterday that as the US customs law explicitly prohibits the importation of goods made using forced labor, in 2021 it passed the specialized UFLPA to limit the importation of cotton and other goods from China’s Xinjiang Uyghur region. Taiwan does not have the legal basis to prohibit the importation of goods