Taiwan Supreme Court rules Gay Marriage is Lawful

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fountainhall

Taiwan Supreme Court rules Gay Marriage is Lawful

Post by fountainhall »

A petition re the validity of gay marriage in Taiwan has overtaken the legislative process. In a ruling this afternoon, the Court states that gay marriage IS covered under the existing Constitution. According to my Taiwan friends who just called, parliament must proceed with legislation that is effective not later than two years time. Great news!
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Gaybutton
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Re: Taiwan Supreme Court rules Gay Marriage is Lawful

Post by Gaybutton »

I'm glad this went through. I hope other Asian countries will soon do the same. It certainly is far better than beating two young guys half to death because they engaged in gay sex.
fountainhall

Re: Taiwan Supreme Court rules Gay Marriage is Lawful

Post by fountainhall »

Let's recall the barbarity of what is going in in Aceh. The scene was mediaeval with those doing the caning fully covered apart from eye slits (where they women?) and a large crowd all but baying for blood. These young men were making love in the privacy of an apartment when a gang entered with cameras. Sharia law requires several witnesses before conviction for being gay and so the intrusion was clearly premeditated and intended to humiliate and exact punishment. Barbaric!

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Photo: CNN
fountainhall

Re: Taiwan Supreme Court rules Gay Marriage is Lawful

Post by fountainhall »

In the thread "Where Did Boys Not Wear Swimming Trunks in 1952?" I wrote this yesterday -
fountainhall wrote:We know that the primary objective of colonialism was trade and profit. We know too that following in a heartbeat were the missionaries determined to root out all local customs and convert the “natives” to Christ - “their” idea of Christ’s teaching!
In Taiwan, Christians make up less than 4% of the population. But they carry far more weight in an island where Chiang Kai Shek and his wife were avid Christians.

This tiny minority is now trying once again to change last year's decision of the Constitutional Court which ruled that the government must enact a law to permit gay marriage by the middle of 2019. Now the island's Central Election Commission has bowed to pressure and passed proposals to permit three island-wide referenda on same-sex marriage. Although this issue has partly been thrown back for public debate, any negative majority would not yet overrule the Constitutional Court decision. What it does is illustrate how the government - led by a President who ran on a same-sex marriage platform - has dithered and made no progress since the gay marriage decision. Now it is trying to find some way of having the population as a whole affect the decision which they are constitutionally bound to enact.

As with all referenda, the key is in the wording and how the public perceive the exact meaning of the wording.
According to Storm Media, the first proposed referendum question is “do you agree to protect the rights of same-sex couples to initiate a long-time relationship to live together based on the laws other than Taiwan’s Civil Code?” The proposed first question was followed by: “Do you agree that elementary and junior high schools should not initiate “gay and lesbian education” as regulated in the Enforcement Rules for the Gender Equality Education Act?” and “Do you agree that the Civil Code should only allow opposite-sex marriage?”

Influential lawyer Lu Chiu-yuan (呂秋遠) on Tuesday questioned the government for tardy progress over the amendment of the Civil Code to address last year's ruling by the constitutional court in favor of same-sex marriage. Lu continued to say that if the government could have put one tenth of the efforts it put into the labor law amendment into the other issue, same-sex marriage would have been legalized today.
https://www.taiwannews.com.tw/en/news/3408519

The tiny 4% which persuaded the powers-that-be that these referenda be adopted is led by J. Michael Cole, the Editor in Chief of Taiwan Sentinel, a Christian KMT members-backed organization. So he's not even a Taiwanese!
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Re: Taiwan Supreme Court rules Gay Marriage is Lawful

Post by a447 »

Chiang Kai Shek and his wife were avid Christians.
I think you should have written "christians" in inverted commas!
fountainhall

Re: Taiwan Supreme Court rules Gay Marriage is Lawful

Post by fountainhall »

Haha! I suspect though that you are only half correct. Chiang himself was a Buddhist as were his first wife and son. When Sun Yat-sen died, Chiang decided he would marry his widow, Soong Ching-ling, thereby giving himself greater legitimacy as the ruler of China. Unfortunately for him, she refused and went on to remain in China as a potent symbol of Mao's revolution. So wily Chiang married her younger sister instead, Soong Mei-ling. The highly influential and rich Soong family were devout Christians. So Mei-ling's father insisted he convert to Christianity before he would permit the marriage. No doubt Chiang made the decision based on power and influence rather than faith.

Mei-ling herself went on to become one of the most powerful women in the world, loved by Americans and loathed by most Chinese. But she remained a Christian until her death in New York at the age of 105.
fountainhall

Re: Taiwan Supreme Court rules Gay Marriage is Lawful

Post by fountainhall »

As mentioned in the Gay Thailand forum, yesterday Taiwan held a referendum on gay marriage. 18 months ago the country's Supreme Court ruled that gay marriage is lawful under existing legislation and gave the government two years to make the necessary changes to the law or enact a new one. Despite the President and her party having run on a gay marriage platform and confirmed it would indeed change the legislation, it then dragged its feet. In fact, it did almost nothing. This created a vacuum into which an alliance of Christian and conservative groups flooded. They drew up an anti-gay marriage agenda and then forced the government into holding a referendum. This was held yesterday. With the coalition having raised more than 10 times the amount of cash as the LGBT community and its supporters, the airwaves were filled with fake news hate rhetoric against the LGBT community.

End result is that the anti-gay lobby won the referendum. However, that does not change the Supreme Court ruling. The government must obey the ruling. What it does change is the LGBT community had merely wanted the existing marriage law as being between a man and a woman to be altered to delete the two genders. What will now happen is a new law will be passed. The LGBT community are afraid that this will not go as far as the existing marriage law. But no doubt there will be a lot of haggling before next summer.

The other result of the referendum is that the ruling party lost a lot of seats in the accompanying election for local councillors. So the President has resigned as leader of her party and the party itself has become a lot weaker in parliament. The Kuomintang Party, the one more favourable to good relations with mainland China, is now on the up again.

https://www.bbc.com/news/world-asia-46329877
fountainhall

Re: Taiwan Supreme Court rules Gay Marriage is Lawful

Post by fountainhall »

Taiwan's referendum on various issues re gay marriage held last Sunday was complicated by its also being part of a larger election for local Mayors and Councillors. Interestingly, voters elected two openly lesbian Mayors.

Gay groups still believe that had the referendum been exclusively on LGBT issues, a majority would have agreed with the Supreme Court's earlier ruling. Whilst that can not be proved, the Sunday vote was not entirely negative for the LGBT community. Voters did vote in favour of introducing gay marriage within three months - provided this does not mean changing the existing Civil Code as it refers to marriage. It now seems a certainty that a new bill formally establishing a same-sex partnership marriage structure will be introduced by the Spring next year. The main concern of activists is that this will not provide the same degree of equality as in heterosexual marriage. But it will be a major step forward.
James the First

Re: Taiwan Supreme Court rules Gay Marriage is Lawful

Post by James the First »

I am a survivor of founding a campus gay org in 1972. Thought evolves in these areas, but there was no longing or taste for aping heterosexual norms in the beginning of the American gay movement. It was then (and should be now for EVERYONE) equal access to all civil rights regardless of sexual orientation. "Marriage" means a lot of things in many cultures including a norm that permits one man to have multiple wives. In the end of it all the world creates it's own Gordian Knot of legalities and thousands of little "laws" which confer or deny rights on the basis of "marriage." Becoming "married" is to suggest that you were not committed partners without a government sanctioned institution. Sure, churches want their share as well. It is a damn shame that a younger in a partnership where the elder is in Social Security has to beg to be included in the care issues of their partner because they are not "blood" relatives. I was once asked this question: "Does your friend have a blood relative living nearby?" My response 30 years in to my relationship: "How fucking dare you! I demand your name so that my attorney has it." It is hideous that children born to loving parents need an umbrella of "marriage" to be assured that if the birth mother dies their "second mother" or "second dad" will still be in their lives. Any way you slice the supposed "marriage equality" it is still pandering to and begging from the good will of the state wherever it occurs. We should never beg to have our government approve of us as long as we are strong enough to approve of ourselves. That gay men and women should absent themselves from countries of oppression is obvious. All who have been slaves would do the same. It is a painful, cruel and unfair world. All of us have to do our best to fight the twin evils of government and religion.
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