The last of three same-sex couples who were slated to attend the Ministry of National Defense’s joint marriage ceremony yesterday announced their decision not to participate, leaving ceremony on Saturday next week without any same-sex couples this year.
Three same-sex couples — two from the navy and one from the air force — had originally signed up, though the two navy couples said last month that they would not attend the ceremony.
The Navy Command Headquarters said the two couples cited media pressure and other concerns for their decision.
The navy maintains an open mind and respect for these couples and wishes them the best, despite their decision, the navy said.
The same-sex couple from the air force has not cited reasons for their decision not to participate in the ceremony, the air force said.
The air force’s joint marriage ceremony is to be held at Pingtung Airport on Saturday next week, while the navy and army will both be holding their joint ceremonies on Nov. 15, the ministry said.
The ministry has allowed same-sex couples to register for the joint marriage ceremony since the passing of the Enforcement Act of Judicial Yuan Constitutional Interpretation No. 748 (司法院釋字第748號解釋施行法) on May 17.
The constitutional interpretation issued in 2017 upheld same-sex couples’ rights to marry and form “a permanent, intimate and exclusive union,” and it demanded legal amendments to be completed within two years.
The act was the legislature’s response to the constitutional interpretation and in keeping with the demands of referendum questions 10 and 12, which received 7.65 million and 6.40 million “yes” votes respectively.
Question #10 asked: “Do you agree that the Civil Code should define marriage as the union between a man and a woman,” while Question #12 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?”
Additional reporting by CNA
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