Kaohsiung City Councilor Huang Jie (黃捷) yesterday urged people to avoid “spreading fear and fake news” online amid rumors that children readingthe book King & King would become gay.
King & King is an illustrated children’s book coauthored by Stern Nijland and Linda De Haan that tells the story a young prince falling in love with another prince.
The Ministry of Education has placed the book on this year’s recommended reading list for first graders.
Groups opposed to marriage equality claimed it was a “plot by the ministry to make children gay.”
One has even threatened schools and demanded that they remove the book from their shelves and recommended reading lists, Huang said.
“The essence of love is understanding. It is not something you can control or force,” Huang quoted the ministry as saying.
The ministry has said that the book provides “emotional education” and teaches children how to deal with others trying to control their emotions.
The book is appropriate for elementary-school-aged children and offers guidance on respecting cultural diversity, it said.
The groups are twisting the message behind the book and spreading misinformation, Huang said.
Other books that teach about diversity had also been targeted by the groups, including Oliver is a Sissy (奧力佛是個娘娘腔), The Boy Who Wears Skirts (穿裙子的男孩) and And Tango Makes Three (一家三口), she said.
The groups called for a boycott of these and other books, including Butterfly Duo Duo (蝴蝶朵朵), which teaches children about sexual assault and about telling people they trust if they become victims, she said.
“Gender equality education has never been aimed at cultivating homosexuality. Teaching children about the LGBT community will not turn children into homosexuals,” Huang said.
The groups should put aside their prejudices and earnestly attempt to understand the message behind the books teaching about diversity, she said.
“Do not hide in darkness spreading false and one-sided information that misleads society, and causes injury to minority groups,” she said.
She would “fully investigate all anti-gender equality messages” she finds, Huang said.
She would also form a gender-equality supervisory group with other city councilors, which would also promote equality education, she said.
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