A Taiwanese delegation of almost 50 people on Sunday attended the LA Pride Parade, joining more than 100,000 people marching in the streets of Los Angeles.
The 55th annual LA Pride Parade started its nearly 2km march from Hollywood Boulevard, filling the streets with music and rainbow flags.
The Tourism Administration-sponsored group of Taiwanese marched with a float featuring “Taiwan” in large letters and decorated with iconic Taiwanese motifs, including the Formosan black bear, bubble tea and Kaohsiung’s Dragon and Tiger Pagodas.
Photo: CNA
A group of Miss Taiwanese American pageant winners waved to cheering crowds from the float.
Among them, Celine Huang (黃韻容) said that “Taiwan is an open, free and accepting country.”
“We are all so proud to demonstrate these values here” at today’s event, she said.
Rainy Dayz, Miss LA Pride at this year’s parade, said she knew Taiwan was the first country in Asia to legalize same-sex marriage thanks to the advocacy of Nymphia Wind (妮妃雅).
Nymphia, the drag persona of Leo Tsao (曹米駬), last year became the first Taiwanese to win Ru Paul’s Drag Race.
Taiwan deserves high praise, Rainy Dayz added.
Parade-goers were celebrating equality and inclusivity, Rainy Dayz said, adding that pride is a form of protest, to tell the world the LGBTQ+ community is united and that every person has a the right to love and love whomever they want.
Separately on Saturday, crowds holding rainbow flags marched in Washington, the host of this year’s WorldPride, to mark the 50th anniversary of Pride celebrations in the US capital.
WorldPride started in late May with three weeks of events planned by the Capital Pride Alliance, a nonprofit group that holds year-round LGBTQ+ Pride festivities in Washington and the region.
Washington initially lost the bid to host WorldPride to Kaohsiung in November 2021, but the Taiwanese preparation committee in August 2022 announced it would not host the event after license-holder InterPride demanded that “Taiwan” be removed from the event’s name.
At the time, the WorldPride 2025 Taiwan Preparation Committee said that InterPride gave it “abrupt notice” to use “Kaohsiung” instead of “Taiwan,” even though the group applied for the event using “Taiwan” in its name.
Kaohsiung Pride, which takes place on the last Saturday in November, had proposed holding the 2025 WorldPride event in October, as the country’s largest pride event — the Taiwan LGBT Pride+ parade in Taipei — is held on the last Saturday of that month.
Taipei on Thursday held urban resilience air raid drills, with residents in one of the exercises’ three “key verification zones” reporting little to no difference compared with previous years, despite government pledges of stricter enforcement. Formerly known as the Wanan exercise, the air raid drills, which concluded yesterday, are now part of the “Urban Resilience Exercise,” which also incorporates the Minan disaster prevention and rescue exercise. In Taipei, the designated key verification zones — where the government said more stringent measures would be enforced — were Songshan (松山), Zhongshan (中山) and Zhongzheng (中正) districts. Air raid sirens sounded at 1:30pm, signaling the
The number of people who reported a same-sex spouse on their income tax increased 1.5-fold from 2020 to 2023, while the overall proportion of taxpayers reporting a spouse decreased by 4.4 percent from 2014 to 2023, Ministry of Finance data showed yesterday. The number of people reporting a spouse on their income tax trended upward from 2014 to 2019, the Department of Statistics said. However, the number decreased in 2020 and 2021, likely due to a drop in marriages during the COVID-19 pandemic and the income of some households falling below the taxable threshold, it said. The number of spousal tax filings rebounded
A saleswoman, surnamed Chen (陳), earlier this month was handed an 18-month prison term for embezzling more than 2,000 pairs of shoes while working at a department store in Tainan. The Tainan District Court convicted Chen of embezzlement in a ruling on July 7, sentencing her to prison for illegally profiting NT$7.32 million (US$248,929) at the expense of her employer. Chen was also given the opportunity to reach a financial settlement, but she declined. Chen was responsible for the sales counter of Nike shoes at Tainan’s Shinkong Mitsukoshi Zhongshan branch, where she had been employed since October 2019. She had previously worked
‘NON-RED’: Taiwan and Ireland should work together to foster a values-driven, democratic economic system, leveraging their complementary industries, Lai said President William Lai (賴清德) yesterday expressed hopes for closer ties between Taiwan and Ireland, and that both countries could collaborate to create a values-driven, democracy-centered economic system. He made the remarks while meeting with an Irish cross-party parliamentary delegation visiting Taiwan. The delegation, led by John McGuinness, deputy speaker of the Irish house of representatives, known as the Dail, includes Irish lawmakers Malcolm Byrne, Barry Ward, Ken O’Flynn and Teresa Costello. McGuinness, who chairs the Ireland-Taiwan Parliamentary Friendship Association, is a friend of Taiwan, and under his leadership, the association’s influence has grown over the past few years, Lai said. Ireland is
RSS