A family court on Dec. 25 last year approved an appeal from a partner in a same-sex marriage, allowing him to become the adoptive father of a child originally adopted by his partner before they got married.
The case is the first in Taiwan in which both partners in a same-sex marriage have been legally allowed to adopt a child to which neither are biologically related.
The ruling, which was made public on Tuesday, meant that the couple, Wang Chen-wei (王振圍) and Chen Chun-ju (陳俊儒), would be able to register Chen as a parent to the child, nicknamed “Joujou,” at their local household registration office next week.
The court said the ruling was in the best interests of the child.
“Finally, the issue of Joujou’s parental rights has come to an end,” Wang wrote on Facebook.
However, while the decision is a breakthrough for the couple, who have fought for Chen to be able to adopt Joujou for more than two years, it does not offer a general precedent, Wang said.
“We will continue to fight. The key is having the law revised,” he wrote. “If our family wants to adopt another child, will we have to go through the same process again and gamble on which judicial affairs officer we get? Or will the law have been amended so it won’t be so hard for everybody?”
Wang referred to a lack of legislative clarity and the wide latitude for interpretation a judge or, in this case, a judicial affairs officer has to decide same-sex adoption cases.
The Act for Implementation of Judicial Yuan Interpretation No. 748 (司法院釋字第七四八號解釋施行法), which legalizes same-sex marriage, stipulates in Article 20 that if a partner in a same-sex union “adopts the genetic child of the other party,” civil law provisions on adoption would apply.
The law makes no mention of what happens if the child was adopted, leaving couples in Wang and Chen’s situation in limbo.
In their case, the Kaohsiung Juvenile and Family Court decided that Article 20 does not explicitly “prohibit the adoption of adopted children,” and that it would be “inappropriate to give a negative or discriminatory interpretation of the provision.”
The primary consideration in the case should be the best interests of the child, it said, adding that civil law provisions on adoption should apply.
A child should not be discriminated against because of their parents’ status, the court said, citing the Convention on the Rights of the Child, which was enshrined into law in Taiwan in 2014.
However, other courts have been less willing to go beyond the letter of the law in similar cases.
The Taiwan Equality Campaign, a gay rights group that helped Wang and Chen along with two other couples seeking adoption, on Tuesday said that the two other couples had their request for adoption rejected, citing the courts as saying that the law did not specifically allow it.
The group said that the two couples would appeal the rulings.
However, the group’s ultimate goal is to achieve a constitutional interpretation by the Council of Grand Justices on the issue, as the campaign to legalize same-sex marriage used a similar tactic, it said.
A revision of the law is needed to provide greater clarity on adoption rights, the group said.
STRONG RELATIONSHIPS: China would not blockade Taiwan, because President Xi respects him, and Russia would not have invaded if he were president, he said Former US president and the Republican candidate in next month’s presidential election Donald Trump said he would impose additional tariffs on China if China were to “go into Taiwan,” the Wall Street Journal (WSJ) reported. “I would say: If you go into Taiwan, I’m sorry to do this, I’m going to tax you, at 150 percent to 200 percent,” Trump was quoted as saying in an interview with the WSJ published on Friday. Asked if he would use military force against a blockade on Taiwan by China, Trump said it would not come to that because Chinese President Xi Jinping (習近平) respected
The Taipei Department of Transportation discouraged YouBike 2.0E users from taking them on long-distance trips after a Taipei city councilor said that riders often use the new electric bike, YouBike 2.0E, to climb Yangmingshan (陽明山). Taipei earlier this year began offering the first 30 minutes of YouBike 2.0 rentals for free, with Taipei and New Taipei offering the YouBike 2.0E on Aug. 30 to encourage rider usage. For YouBike 2.0, the rate is NT$10 per 30 minutes within the first four hours, NT$20 per 30 minutes for five to eight hours and NT$40 per 30 minutes after eight hours. Meanwhile, for e-bikes,
RESOURCE RICH: Taiwan is located in the Pacific Ring of Fire and has up to 30 gigawatts of the potential energy, of which 10 gigawatts could be economically viable Academia Sinica and CPC Corp yesterday began drilling the nation’s first deep geothermal well in Yilan County’s Yuanshan Township (員山). The 4km-deep well is expected to take 18 months to complete and has an estimated investment of NT$337 million (US$10.54 million), Academia Sinica President James Liao (廖俊智) said. “While Taiwan has up to 30 gigawatts of potential deep geothermal energy, with an estimated 10 gigawatts being economically viable, only by digging wells can we determine the actual amount of commercially viable geothermal energy,” Liao said at the project’s opening ceremony. Data collected during and after the excavation process would be used for future
HACKERS’ MARKET: Chat logs about Taiwan and documents outlining ways to take over online accounts were leaked from a company that sells data from hacks Taiwanese cybersecurity specialists found 577 leaked documents which show that the Chinese Communist Party is engaging in “cognitive warfare” against Taiwan through cyberattacks and disinformation campaigns, a documentary released last month by Japanese public broadcaster NHK showed. The filmmakers behind Tracking China’s Leaked Documents said they spent six months visiting seven countries, including Taiwan, where they interviewed members of TeamT5, a malware research and cybersecurity firm, which found the leaked documents. TeamT5 said they discovered a string of mysterious URLs on the social media platform X, which they suspected could be accounts created by hackers or people who leaked data, which led