Fri, Mar 17, 2017 page3

• Group to submit stories to review on gay marriage

  • By Abraham Gerber / Staff reporter
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  Homosexual couples’ stories are to be collected for a planned submission to the Council of Grand Justices to demonstrate the importance of marriage equality when a constitutional review begins next week, the advocacy group Equal Love Taiwan said yesterday.

  “In the upcoming debate, we hope that the judges and society will be able to see the importance of this issue to homosexuals: They keep facing unnecessary risks because [equal] rights have not been achieved,” said Teng Chu-yuan (鄧筑媛), who serves as the lobbying manager for the organization, a consortium of several groups.

  “We want to make the judges see what marriage equality means to homosexual partners, including throughout the entire medical process,” Teng added at the news conference.

  

  Author Chu Hsin-yi, second left, and director Huang Hui-chen, second right, join members of a coalition of gay rights groups at a news conference in Taipei yesterday.

  Photo: CNA

  Author Chu Hsin-yi (瞿欣怡), who published a book about her experience caring for a partner diagnosed with breast cancer, said discrimination against homosexual couples persists even in areas where they have legal rights.

  “I originally did not want to write about such a personal experience, but we ran into a huge number of differences in treatment compared with heterosexual couples,” she said, adding that her right to sign consent forms for her partner was a major concern.

  “Some opposing groups will claim that the Medical Care Act (醫療法) already contains provisions allowing for someone in a ‘relationship’ with the patient to sign consent forms, but that definition is extremely vague. In practice, when you are talking about not resuscitating a patient or amputation, doctors often do not dare allow a homosexual partner to sign,” she said.

  She added that she has received many stories from other homosexual couples after publishing her book, including a man who was not allowed to claim his deceased partner’s body and was evicted from their home because it had been registered under his partner’s name.

  “His lawyer presented evidence that he had also been paying for the apartment, but the lawyers representing his deceased partner’s parents argued that was ‘rent,’ and he was forced off out of the property,” she said, but added that the judge had ruled that the parents were obligated to refund the “rent.”

  Taiwan Tongzhi Hotline Association social media development director Amy Lin (林昱君) broke down in tears as she talked about comforting a mother who called with concerns that her homosexual child would be alone later in life because of her inability to legally marry.

  “I did not really know what to say, because so much about this issue is just absurd, but I told her not to worry, because we are working to bring about the answer she wants,” Lin said.
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