Worried about the impact of a gay rights parade on Oct. 31, hundreds of Christian anti-gay activists took to the streets of Taipei yesterday.
“The annual gay parade was first held in 2003 with only 500 people, but the number of participants grew to 18,000 last year. Don't you think that's horrible?” Pastor Chen Yu-chuan (陳宇全), one of the co-organizers of yesterday's event, asked a crowd before the parade began at Liberty Square in Taipei.
“The gay parade last year was the biggest in Asia and may become the biggest in the world in the future. Would you want to see the downfall of Taiwan,” the pastor said.
PHOTO: LIAO CHEN-HUEI, TAIPEI TIMES
The crowd enthusiastically answered: “It's horrible” and “No” to Chen's questions.
Behind Chen were large banners that read: “No to mistaken love,” “Keep Taiwan clean” and “God's love is beyond everything.”
Another co-organizer of the demonstration, Peter Chu (朱植森), also a pastor, said that sexual relations between two men or two women was against human nature and could bring disaster.
PHOTO: LIAO CHEN-HUEI, TAIPEI TIMES
“We're worried that God may bring destruction upon Taiwan and everyone who lives here, just as he did to Sodom and Gomorrah,” Chu said.
The parade began after the rally, with participants holding banners and placards bearing slogans such as “Gay parade will bring destruction” and “God blesses only the union between a man and a woman.”
A woman surnamed Lin (林) said that gay marriages would only create “incomplete families” that would give their children “twisted values.”
“Suppose that two women get married and raise a child together — who should be called mother?” she asked.
They sang Christian hymns and chanted slogans as they marched through the streets in central Taipei.
When they returned to the Liberty Square more than an hour later, they were met by a group of gay rights activists — many of them Christians and gays.
“We don't think that the Bible prohibits homosexuality, it's just a matter of how you interpret it,” said Wang Hao-chung (王灝中), one of the activists.
“Jesus teaches us to love and not to judge. It's unfortunate that church organizations are so eager to judge gays and hold activities that will only fuel hatred,” he said.
The activists then sent a copy of their statement to Chu, who debated with the activists as he accepted the statement.
“The church does not promote hatred and does not hate gays. We welcome them with our arms wide open,” Chu said. “We welcome gays, just as we would welcome murderers, rapists and robbers in the church.”
“We have nothing against gays; we just hope they would correct their incorrect sexual behavior,” he said.
As the two sides talked, a young man taking part in the parade rushed forward and shouted: “Gays are just not human.”
Gay rights activists said it was just an example of how such parades would only fuel hatred, while Chu said what the man did was wrong.
The debate ended as the two sides could not reach an agreement.
Civil society groups yesterday protested outside the Legislative Yuan, decrying Chinese Nationalist Party (KMT) efforts to pass three major bills that they said would seriously harm Taiwan’s democracy, and called to oust KMT caucus whip Fu Kun-chi (傅?萁). It was the second night of the three-day “Bluebird wintertime action” protests in Taipei, with organizers announcing that 8,000 people attended. Organized by Taiwan Citizen Front, the Economic Democracy Union (EDU) and a coalition of civil groups, about 6,000 people began a demonstration in front of KMT party headquarters in Taipei on Wednesday, organizers said. For the third day, the organizers asked people to assemble
POOR IMPLEMENTATION: Teachers welcomed the suspension, saying that the scheme disrupted school schedules, quality of learning and the milk market A policy to offer free milk to all school-age children nationwide is to be suspended next year due to multiple problems arising from implementation of the policy, the Executive Yuan announced yesterday. The policy was designed to increase the calcium intake of school-age children in Taiwan by drinking milk, as more than 80 percent drink less than 240ml per day. The recommended amount is 480ml. It was also implemented to help Taiwanese dairy farmers counter competition from fresh milk produced in New Zealand, which is to be imported to Taiwan tariff-free next year when the Agreement Between New Zealand and
A woman who allegedly spiked the food and drinks of an Australian man with rat poison, leaving him in intensive care, has been charged with attempted murder, the Taipei District Prosecutors’ Office said yesterday. The woman, identified by her surname Yang (楊), is accused of repeatedly poisoning Alex Shorey over the course of several months last year to prevent the Australian man from leaving Taiwan, prosecutors said in a statement. Shorey was evacuated back to Australia on May 3 last year after being admitted to intensive care in Taiwan. According to prosecutors, Yang put bromadiolone, a rodenticide that prevents blood from
China is likely to focus on its economy over the next four years and not set a timetable for attempting to annex Taiwan, a researcher at Beijing’s Tsinghua University wrote in an article published in Foreign Affairs magazine on Friday. In the article titled “Why China isn’t scared of Trump: US-Chinese tensions may rise, but his isolationism will help Beijing,” Chinese international studies researcher Yan Xuetong (閻學通) wrote that the US and China are unlikely to go to war over Taiwan in the next four years under US president-elect Donald Trump. While economic and military tensions between the US and China would
RSS