The pursuit of liberal values such as LGBTQ+ rights is a way for Taiwan to differentiate itself from China and appeal to the international community, a Japanese academic said yesterday.
Taiwan’s stance on LGBTQ+ issues is relatively progressive for Asia, said Ogasawara Yoshiyuki, a professor in the Graduate School of Global Studies at Tokyo University of Foreign Studies who researches Taiwanese politics.
Taiwan’s liberal social values might be a result of its history, Ogasawara wrote on Facebook.
Photo: Ann Wang, REUTERS
The Chinese Nationalist Party (KMT) regime under Chiang Kai-shek (蔣介石) emphasized unifying “Chinese” values, he said.
In the democracy movement that followed, interest groups countered KMT ideology by adopting multicultural and pluralistic values, he said.
During the process of mediating a Taiwanese identity, some people came to view Taiwan’s pursuit of liberal values as a way to show the international community how different it is from China, he wrote.
Consideration of minority group rights began to take hold despite a relatively conservative society formed largely by Chinese immigrants, he added.
Although same-sex marriage has been legalized, people are still striving to overcome other challenges as they continue to deepen Taiwan’s democratic society, he said.
Meanwhile, the New Power Party (NPP) on Saturday joined the 20th annual Pride parade in Taipei to show support for LGBTQ+ rights and efforts to lower the voting age, as well as call for equal adoption and international marriage rights.
Gender equality is a core value of the NPP, including the right for everyone to choose how they identify and present themselves, party Chairwoman Chen Jiau-hua (陳椒華) said.
“Legalizing same-sex marriage was only a start to achieving gender equality,” NPP Legislator Claire Wang (王婉諭) said.
Many goals remain on the road to full equality, including the right to adopt non-biological children and cross-national marriage, Wang said.
The NPP caucus has submitted an amendment to 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) to allow same-sex couples to adopt children not biologically related to either spouse, Wang said.
The draft is awaiting deliberation in committee, she said.
As for cross-national marriage, due to the “excessive conservatism” of the Act Governing the Choice of Law in Civil Matters Involving Foreign Elements (涉外民事法律適用法), couples in which one or both partners are from a country that does not recognize same-sex marriage must fight in court for their right to marry, Wang said.
Four couples have won cases in the past three years, but taking such cases to court is a waste of judicial resources and an undue burden on litigants, she said.
The NPP has sent requests to the Ministry of the Interior to order household registration offices to allow cross-national couples to register for marriage, thereby applying court decisions in such matters to all people, she said.
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