Voters must offer the government guidance on marriage equality.

The News Lens
Date: 2018/11/20
By: Stellina Chen

This Saturday, Taiwan will vote on no fewer than five referendums relating to gender equity and LGBTQ rights.

This situation is a far cry from the euphoria that greeted the Constitutional Court’s decision of May 24, 2017, which ruled that a prohibition against same-sex marriage written into Taiwan’s Civil Code was unconstitutional.

The court ruled that the government had two years in which to legislate for the change. Yet despite campaigning on the back of pledges to support marriage equality, President Tsai Ing-wen (蔡英文)’s government dragged its heels, and later the same year the legislature passed significant amendments to the Referendum Act that have opened the door for the country to vote on the issue once again.

President Tsai calculated that there is a greater political risk in upsetting the forces of conservatism opposed to gender equitable marriage, embodied by the Happiness of the Next Generation Alliance, than the community so ardently represented by 100,000 or so people attending last weekend’s pro-LGBT rights rally in Taipei.
[FULL  STORY]