Taipei Mayor Ko Wen-je (柯文哲) on Friday said that he had cast invalid votes in 2018 referendums related to legalizing same-sex marriage and same-sex education.
In a Facebook post about his opinions on the referendums, Ko wrote that he had cast invalid votes, but did not specify why they were invalid.
He also wrote that he believes that “basic human rights and universal values should not be decided by majority rule.”
The comments came just before yesterday’s Kaohsiung Pride parade, which echoes Global Pride 2020, a 24-hour livestream event celebrating the LGBTQI community.
In the referendums held on Nov. 24, 2018, five were related to same-sex marriage and gender equality.
Ko was referring to referendum Nos. 14 and No. 15, which both failed to pass.
Referendum No. 14 asked: “Do you agree that the right to marriage of persons of the same sex should be protected by legislation under the chapter on marriage of the Civil Code?” while No. 15 asked: “Do you agree that mandatory education should, as stipulated by the Gender Equity Education Act (性別平等教育法), implement gender equality education, which includes emotional, sexual and gay and lesbian education?”
“Issues concerning ‘value’ and ‘human rights’ should not be decided by voting, competing for who are the majority or minority, or who are the winners and losers. There should be better ways to solve conflicts, rather than expand them,” Ko wrote.
The Taipei Department of Civil Affairs in 2017 asked for a constitutional interpretation on the issue of the Civil Code not allowing for the legalization of same-sex marriage, and the Council of Grand Justices in May 2017 ruled that the prohibition of same-sex marriage in the Civil Code was unconstitutional, he wrote.
The interpretation also said that the government must amend or enact laws in accordance with the ruling within two years, so the Democratic Progressive Party (DPP) lawmakers should have directly amended the law last year, rather than put the issue to referendums in 2018, Ko said.
“I admit that my understanding of gay, lesbian and gender issues is still too little, but I would firmly support the idea that ‘all people are created equal,’” he wrote, adding that he had invited the LGBT community to visit Taipei for the LGBT Pride parade in late October last year.
However, DPP Legislator Fan Yun (范雲) yesterday on Facebook questioned Ko’s real stance on legalizing same-sex marriage, saying that the mayor has been inconsistent on the nation’s sovereignty and LGBT equality rights.
The Taipei City Government had always been the most gender-friendly local government, but the city government under Ko has ignored LGBT groups’ protests and allowed representatives of anti-LGBT groups to attend the city’s Gender Equality Education Committee meetings, she wrote.
LOUD AND PROUD Taiwan might have taken a drubbing against Australia and Japan, but you might not know it from the enthusiasm and numbers of the fans Taiwan might not be expected to win the World Baseball Classic (WBC) but their fans are making their presence felt in Tokyo, with tens of thousands decked out in the team’s blue, blowing horns and singing songs. Taiwanese fans have packed out the Tokyo Dome for all three of their games so far and even threatened to drown out home team supporters when their team played Japan on Friday. They blew trumpets, chanted for their favorite players and had their own cheerleading squad who dance on a stage during the game. The team struggled to match that exuberance on the field, with
Taiwanese paleontologists have discovered fossil evidence that pythons up to 4m long inhabited Taiwan during the Pleistocene epoch, reporting their findings in the international scientific journal Historical Biology. National Taiwan University (NTU) Institute of Ecology and Evolutionary Biology associate professor Tsai Cheng-hsiu (蔡政修) led the team that discovered the largest snake fossil ever found in Taiwan. The single trunk vertebra was discovered in Tainan at the Chiting Formation, dated to between 400,000 and 800,000 years ago in the Middle Pleistocene, the paper said. The area also produced Taiwan’s first avian fossil, as well as crocodile, mammoth, saber-toothed cat and rhinoceros fossils, it said. Discoveries
Taiwanese paleontologists have discovered fossil evidence that pythons up to 4m long inhabited Taiwan during the Pleistocene epoch, reporting their findings in the international scientific journal Historical Biology. National Taiwan University (NTU) Institute of Ecology and Evolutionary Biology associate professor Tsai Cheng-hsiu (蔡政修) led the team that discovered the largest snake fossil ever found in Taiwan. A single trunk vertebra was discovered in Tainan at the Chiting Formation, dated to between 800,000 to 400,000 years ago in the Middle Pleistocene, the paper said. The area also produced Taiwan’s first avian fossil, as well as crocodile, mammoth, sabre-toothed cat and rhinoceros fossils, it said. Discoveries
Whether Japan would help defend Taiwan in case of a cross-strait conflict would depend on the US and the extent to which Japan would be allowed to act under the US-Japan Security Treaty, former Japanese minister of defense Satoshi Morimoto said. As China has not given up on the idea of invading Taiwan by force, to what extent Japan could support US military action would hinge on Washington’s intention and its negotiation with Tokyo, Morimoto said in an interview with the Liberty Times (sister paper of the Taipei Times) yesterday. There has to be sufficient mutual recognition of how Japan could provide
RSS