Twenty-eight same-sex couples yesterday showed up at a Taipei household registration office, applying to make marriage registrations despite the Civil Code stipulating that a marriage must be a union between a man and a woman.
As part of a campaign pushing for the legalization of same-sex marriage, the couples, accompanied by activists from the Taiwan Alliance to Promote Civil Partnership Rights (TAPCPR), walked into Zhongzheng District Household Registration Office, took numbers and waited to submit their applications for marriage registration.
Although clerks took the applications with a friendly attitude, they apologized to the couples, as the computer system would not allow same-sex couples to make marriage registrations.
“The computer system was designed according to the Civil Code, which stipulates that a legal marriage can only be a union between a man and a woman,” office director Lin Tsung-ming (林聰明) said. “Therefore, the system would automatically reject the registration when the clerks keyed in their national ID numbers.”
“I respect the TAPCPR’s freedom of expression, but I would like to ask them not to cause trouble for other people going about their business here,” he added.
In response, TAPCPR secretary-general Chien Chih-chieh (簡至潔) said she understands that the group’s action may cause trouble for others, “however, please think about how much trouble the law has caused us for so many years.”
“LGBT [lesbian, gay, bisexual and transgender] people are also citizens of this country and we want to be treated equally on the right to marry,” she said.
Chen Hsin-chieh (陳欣潔), who was there with her same-sex partner, Chen Ling (陳淩), said it does not make sense that the law decides which couples can be married based on gender.
“It’s ridiculous that I can just go out and randomly find a man on the street and marry him, but I can’t marry Chen Ling after we’ve been dating for so many years,” she said.
Fang Min (方敏) and her partner, nicknamed Tang Tang (糖糖), showed up at the household registration office accompanied by Fang’s mother, who said that she would give the couple her best wishes because she wants her daughter to be happy.
Although the office did not legally register their marriage, Fang’s mother still gave rings to Fang and Tang Tang as their wedding gifts.
“I’m determined to spend my life with Fang,” Tang Tang said. “What we’re doing today is still very meaningful to both of us, even though the law does not recognize our marriage.”
Former president Ma Ying-jeou’s (馬英九) mention of Taiwan’s official name during a meeting with Chinese President Xi Jinping (習近平) on Wednesday was likely a deliberate political play, academics said. “As I see it, it was intentional,” National Chengchi University Graduate Institute of East Asian Studies professor Wang Hsin-hsien (王信賢) said of Ma’s initial use of the “Republic of China” (ROC) to refer to the wider concept of “the Chinese nation.” Ma quickly corrected himself, and his office later described his use of the two similar-sounding yet politically distinct terms as “purely a gaffe.” Given Ma was reading from a script, the supposed slipup
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,
The bodies of two individuals were recovered and three additional bodies were discovered on the Shakadang Trail (砂卡礑) in Taroko National Park, eight days after the devastating earthquake in Hualien County, search-and-rescue personnel said. The rescuers reported that they retrieved the bodies of a man and a girl, suspected to be the father and daughter from the Yu (游) family, 500m from the entrance of the trail on Wednesday. The rescue team added that despite the discovery of the two bodies on Friday last week, they had been unable to retrieve them until Wednesday due to the heavy equipment needed to lift