Pride Month has officially begun in Taipei, with weeks of activities and events that are to culminate in Asia’s largest annual Pride parade on Oct. 26.
Every October offers a chance to celebrate Taiwan’s commendable progress in LGBTQ+ rights and for the community to express its joy. However, it is also an opportunity to take stock of areas that still need improvement and remember that the road to equality is a long one, arduously paved by the activists who strive year-round to earn Taiwan its reputation as the most LGBT-friendly place in Asia.
This year saw wins and losses in the fight to allow transgender people to change their official gender. In May, a trans man for the first time won the right to change his designation without undergoing gender confirmation surgery after the Taipei High Administrative Court ruled in his favor. It followed a similar ruling in 2021 that gave a trans woman the right to change her legal gender without surgery.
However, another ruling by the same court in August rejected a bid by a trans woman to change her legal gender without an official diagnosis of gender dysphoria, although it also ordered her household registration office to review the application again. Instead of a medical diagnosis, the plaintiff had submitted “social evidence,” including letters and photographs to prove she was living as a woman. While not unexpected, it shows that the courts still consider gender to be a medical issue framed as a type of “dysphoria,” even if it no longer mandates surgical intervention, thereby stigmatizing diverse gender expression as an illness.
Cross-strait couples also had reason for celebration last month, when the Ministry of the Interior and Mainland Affairs Council announced that they can register their marriages in Taiwan. The law passed in 2019 legalizing same-sex marriage let cross-national couples fall through the cracks, and due to the already complicated nature of cross-strait relations, Taiwanese-Chinese couples have continued to be left out. However, after last month’s decision, these couples can submit a marriage certificate from one of the 35 countries that recognize same-sex marriage and, after submitting their documents and sitting for an interview, register their marriage in Taiwan.
The issues of surrogacy and assisted reproduction have also taken center stage this year, when the Ministry of Health and Welfare in May released draft amendments to the Assisted Reproduction Act (人工生殖法). The long-overdue changes seek to provide access to assisted reproduction care for single women and lesbian couples, who are barred from receiving treatments by the act that defines a recipient couple as “a husband and wife.” It would also legalize altruistic surrogacy, which has significant implications for gay couples who want to start a family and prefer to do so through surrogacy rather than adoption.
However, the act and amendment alike have received ample criticism for legislating assisted reproduction alongside surrogacy, which comes with a more contentious set of legal and ethical questions. Advocates fear that the more controversial aspects of legalizing surrogacy could stymie the amendment’s passage, thereby also stalling the right to access assisted reproduction technologies by single women and lesbian couples for which there is widespread support.
The comment period ended in July and the ministry hopes to forward the final draft to the Executive Yuan for approval by the end of the year, but with the criticism continuing unabated, it might take far longer — especially as it would next need to make it through a deeply divided legislature.
LGBTQ+ rights continue to march forward in Taiwan. People in the queer community, the many activists who continue to push for LGBTQ+ rights, and allies in Taiwan and those from abroad this month have a lot to celebrate, as well as a lot more work to do.
President William Lai (賴清德) attended a dinner held by the American Israel Public Affairs Committee (AIPAC) when representatives from the group visited Taiwan in October. In a speech at the event, Lai highlighted similarities in the geopolitical challenges faced by Israel and Taiwan, saying that the two countries “stand on the front line against authoritarianism.” Lai noted how Taiwan had “immediately condemned” the Oct. 7, 2023, attack on Israel by Hamas and had provided humanitarian aid. Lai was heavily criticized from some quarters for standing with AIPAC and Israel. On Nov. 4, the Taipei Times published an opinion article (“Speak out on the
Most Hong Kongers ignored the elections for its Legislative Council (LegCo) in 2021 and did so once again on Sunday. Unlike in 2021, moderate democrats who pledged their allegiance to Beijing were absent from the ballots this year. The electoral system overhaul is apparent revenge by Beijing for the democracy movement. On Sunday, the Hong Kong “patriots-only” election of the LegCo had a record-low turnout in the five geographical constituencies, with only 1.3 million people casting their ballots on the only seats that most Hong Kongers are eligible to vote for. Blank and invalid votes were up 50 percent from the previous
More than a week after Hondurans voted, the country still does not know who will be its next president. The Honduran National Electoral Council has not declared a winner, and the transmission of results has experienced repeated malfunctions that interrupted updates for almost 24 hours at times. The delay has become the second-longest post-electoral silence since the election of former Honduran president Juan Orlando Hernandez of the National Party in 2017, which was tainted by accusations of fraud. Once again, this has raised concerns among observers, civil society groups and the international community. The preliminary results remain close, but both
News about expanding security cooperation between Israel and Taiwan, including the visits of Deputy Minister of National Defense Po Horng-huei (柏鴻輝) in September and Deputy Minister of Foreign Affairs Francois Wu (吳志中) this month, as well as growing ties in areas such as missile defense and cybersecurity, should not be viewed as isolated events. The emphasis on missile defense, including Taiwan’s newly introduced T-Dome project, is simply the most visible sign of a deeper trend that has been taking shape quietly over the past two to three years. Taipei is seeking to expand security and defense cooperation with Israel, something officials
RSS