In an unprecedented move, the Council of Grand Justices yesterday announced that it would broadcast live a debate next month on the issue of same-sex marriage from the perspective of a constitutional interpretation.
Legal professionals and four academics are to participate in the debate, which is scheduled for 9:30am on March 24, it said.
The debate will address two requests for a constitutional interpretation on the issue of same-sex marriage, the council said, adding that the cases were filed by the Taipei City Government and gay rights advocate Chi Chia-wei (祁家威).
Photo: Liu Hsin-de, Taipei Times
Chi is widely known as one of the nation’s pioneers in the fight for marriage equality, having first sought recognition of his union with his partner 16 years ago through a constitutional review of the nation’s marriage laws, in which he was defeated.
Three years ago, Chi initiated a second attempt, which also met with failure, despite having the support of the Taiwan Alliance to Promote Civil Partnership Rights and more than a dozen lawyers. That case was defeated in the Supreme Court in August 2015.
The March 24 debate would be Chi’s third request for a constitutional review of the nation’s marriage laws.
The other constitutional interpretation requested was filed by the Taipei City Government’s Bureau of Civil Affairs, which has been receiving an increasing number of same-sex marriage registration requests since Chi’s second appeal.
Taiwan Tongzhi Hotline Association research associate Lu Hsin-chieh (呂欣潔) and her partner, in addition to two other same-sex couples, filed an administrative lawsuit against the bureau after their marriage applications were rejected.
The bureau in 2015 filed for a constitutional interpretation in response.
NO-LIMITS PARTNERSHIP: ‘The bottom line’ is that if the US were to have a conflict with China or Russia it would likely open up a second front with the other, a US senator said Beijing and Moscow could cooperate in a conflict over Taiwan, the top US intelligence chief told the US Senate this week. “We see China and Russia, for the first time, exercising together in relation to Taiwan and recognizing that this is a place where China definitely wants Russia to be working with them, and we see no reason why they wouldn’t,” US Director of National Intelligence Avril Haines told a US Senate Committee on Armed Services hearing on Thursday. US Senator Mike Rounds asked Haines about such a potential scenario. He also asked US Defense Intelligence Agency Director Lieutenant General Jeffrey Kruse
FAST RELEASE: The council lauded the developer for completing model testing in only four days and releasing a commercial version for use by academia and industry The National Science and Technology Council (NSTC) yesterday released the latest artificial intelligence (AI) language model in traditional Chinese embedded with Taiwanese cultural values. The council launched the Trustworthy AI Dialogue Engine (TAIDE) program in April last year to develop and train traditional Chinese-language models based on LLaMA, the open-source AI language model released by Meta. The program aims to tackle the information bias that is often present in international large-scale language models and take Taiwanese culture and values into consideration, it said. Llama 3-TAIDE-LX-8B-Chat-Alpha1, released yesterday, is the latest large language model in traditional Chinese. It was trained based on Meta’s Llama-3-8B
STUMPED: KMT and TPP lawmakers approved a resolution to suspend the rate hike, which the government said was unavoidable in view of rising global energy costs The Ministry of Economic Affairs yesterday said it has a mandate to raise electricity prices as planned after the legislature passed a non-binding resolution along partisan lines to freeze rates. Chinese Nationalist Party (KMT) lawmakers proposed the resolution to suspend the price hike, which passed by a 59-50 vote. The Taiwan People’s Party (TPP) voted with the KMT. Legislative Speaker Han Kuo-yu (韓國瑜) of the KMT said the resolution is a mandate for the “immediate suspension of electricity price hikes” and for the Executive Yuan to review its energy policy and propose supplementary measures. A government-organized electricity price evaluation board in March
NOVEL METHODS: The PLA has adopted new approaches and recently conducted three combat readiness drills at night which included aircraft and ships, an official said Taiwan is monitoring China’s People’s Liberation Army (PLA) exercises for changes in their size or pattern as the nation prepares for president-elect William Lai’s (賴清德) inauguration on May 20, National Security Bureau (NSB) Director-General Tsai Ming-yen (蔡明彥) said yesterday. Tsai made the comment at a meeting of the Legislative Yuan’s Foreign Affairs and National Defense Committee, in response to Democratic Progressive Party (DPP) Legislator Wang Ting-yu’s (王定宇) questions. China continues to employ a carrot-and-stick approach, in which it applies pressure with “gray zone” tactics, while attempting to entice Taiwanese with perks, Tsai said. These actions aim to help Beijing look like it has