“Finally, this moment has arrived,” Chen Jun-ju (陳俊儒) sighed in relief, speaking to reporters crowded into the Household Registration Office in Taipei’s Xinyi District (信義) on Jan. 13.
“I’m looking forward to seeing my name on my child’s ID. I’m so happy we have made it to this point. It has been a difficult road to get here,” he said.
The years-long legal effort by Chen and his partner, Wang Chen-wei (王振圍), to adopt a daughter had come to an end. Their case was the first in Taiwan in which both partners in a same-sex marriage were legally allowed to adopt a child to which neither was biologically related.
Photo: CNA
Yet the victory was bittersweet, because it did not change a basic reality: same-sex marriage might have been legalized in Taiwan in May 2019, but same-sex couples are still barred from adopting children and are also prohibited from using assisted reproductive technology.
At the heart of the problem is the same-sex marriage law, known as the Act for Implementation of Judicial Yuan Interpretation No. 748 (司法院釋字第748號解釋施行法), passed on May 24, 2019. Its only reference to adoption is that a partner in a same-sex union can “adopt the genetic child of the other party.”
Left unsaid is what happens if a same-sex couple wants to adopt a child not genetically related to either partner, or if one partner wants to adopt a child the other partner adopted prior to getting married.
Neither of those options are problematic for opposite-sex couples, but they are not possible for same-sex couples, with Chen and Wang the one exception so far.
Taiwan LGBTQ Family Rights Advocacy secretary-general Reese Li (黎璿萍) said the issue is growing in importance, as her organization has seen a rise in same-sex couples looking to start a family in Taiwan.
The group last year advised 1,200 such individuals, compared with the 3,000 they advised in the previous five years.
Wang and Chen, who have been together 17 years, began their adoption process in May 2017, Chen said.
They were approved for adoption in December 2018, and a month later were matched with their future daughter, nicknamed Joujou (肉肉).
In Taiwan, any individual can adopt a child after going through the adoption process, and the couple’s application was in Wang’s name, but Chen and Wang had hoped Taiwan’s pending same-sex marriage law would enable them to adopt Joujou as a married couple.
Their hopes were dashed when the bill placed a condition on adoption — that the child be biologically related to one of the partners in the marriage — which is why when it passed, “we couldn’t bring ourselves to be happy,” Chen said.
Chen and Wang had originally planned on getting married in August 2019, but their adoption agency said doing so would jeopardize their application to adopt Joujou, Chen said.
The couple eventually did get married after Wang officially adopted Joujou, but the move weighed heavily on Chen.
Chen could not sign documents related to Joujou, and was forced to drop his pursuit of a master’s degree when he could not get a parental leave extension to write his thesis.
However, the emotional burden took an even greater toll than the practical issues.
“I felt like I was somehow lesser than other people. I was her father, but I had no way to prove that I was her father,” he said, describing the situation as “clear discrimination.”
With the help of LGBTQ rights groups, Chen and Wang, along with two other couples in the same situation, went to court to gain full parental rights in April last year. Only Chen and Wang’s case was approved.
The judicial affairs officer presiding over their case said that the same-sex marriage law did not prohibit the adoption of non-biological children, and that allowing Chen to also adopt Joujou was in the best interests of the child.
In the other cases, judicial officers were unwilling to give a similar go-ahead without explicit guidance from the law.
Now that he is legally recognized as Joujou’s father, Chen said he has “blossomed” and is “completely happy.”
Wang, active in social justice issues since his student days, has more mixed feelings.
When asked how it felt to be the first same-sex couple in Asia to adopt a child together, Wang told people that he did not want to be the first, because it was a right everyone should have rather than just them, Chen said.
The couple have now begun the process to adopt a second child, but it is unclear whether they could be forced to get divorced for the adoption to go through, Chen said.
Despite the uncertainty, they have no plans to wait until Taiwan’s laws are changed.
“We’re getting old,” he joked.
Taiwan LGBTQ Family Rights Advocacy director Chu Chia-jong (朱家瑢) began the process of adopting a child with her partner of 13 years early last year, she said.
They initially considered conceiving children via assisted reproductive technologies abroad, as Taiwan’s Assisted Reproduction Act (人工生殖法) limits the use of such technologies to opposite-sex married couples.
The COVID-19 pandemic complicated overseas travel, so she and her partner opted for adoption instead, knowing they would face unfair legal barriers.
The adoption is being filed in Chu’s name, meaning that her partner, who has been involved in every step of the process, would not have legal rights as a parent, she said.
“In the future, will we also have to go through [a lawsuit] to obtain full parental rights? For something our family and our child are supposed to have?” she asked.
The solution is simple, Li said: Strike the word “genetic” from the adoption clause in the same-sex marriage law so that a partner in a same-sex union can adopt the other’s child.
Failure to do so would leave adopted children vulnerable, because if the parent with legal adoption rights passes away, the other parent would not automatically become the child’s guardian, she said.
Amending the adoption clause would also give more children who are available for adoption a chance to find suitable families, she said.
About 600 children are put up for adoption each year, but only about 200 are successfully matched with adoptive parents, government data showed.
Alhough legislators have proposed amendments to the law, they are waiting for the Ministry of Justice to finish an evaluation of the subject before discussing the proposals, she said.
Going abroad to conceive children via assisted reproductive technologies is an alternative, but it is expensive, Li said.
Female same-sex couples pay about NT$600,000 to NT$1 million (US$20,416 to US$34,027), while male couples relying on a surrogate could pay from NT$4 million to NT$6 million, she said.
The Ministry of Health and Welfare two years ago began drafting legal amendments that would allow same-sex female couples to conceive children.
After a draft surrogacy bill was sent to the Legislature in May 2020, the ministry is now considering the two issues together, and it seems unlikely it would craft a draft bill this year, due to the issue’s complexity and lack of public consensus, Li said.
Whether same-sex couples adopt or use assisted reproductive technologies, acceptance of same-sex couples as parents has grown.
A government survey last month found that 71 percent of respondents agreed that same-sex couples should have the right to adopt children, while 71.8 percent said that same-sex couples can be good parents.
Chu said she has seen this firsthand.
People sometimes make assumptions when they do not know much about a subject, but after face-to-face interactions and listening to the stories of same-sex parents, people realize they are not that different from opposite-sex parents, Chu said.
“At the end of the day, we all want these children to grow up happily and healthily, no matter their background,” she said.
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