The Taipei High Administrative Court has thrown out a gay couple’s appeal against a government agency that refused to register their marriage in the latest setback for same-sex unions in the nation, activists said yesterday.
Gay rights activist Chi Chia-wei (祁家威) and his partner filed the complaint with the Taipei court last year.
The court on Thursday ruled in favor of the agency, saying it did not violate the law that stipulates that “a marriage contract should be between a man and a woman.”
Photo: EPA
Chi has launched multiple legal bids to seek recognition of his marriage since 1986, but all have been rejected.
“The government is outdated and has not progressed over the years. This case concerns not just me, but all gay and lesbian people. This is unfair and I will appeal,” Chi said.
In 2011, another couple filed a similar complaint to an administrative court over the government’s refusal to register their marriage, but decided to drop their case last year, citing death threats as one of the reasons.
“We regret and are deeply saddened by the ruling ... which shows that Taiwan remains locked in the past, while the US and Europe are moving to support gay marriages,” Taiwan LGBT Family Rights Advocacy said in a statement. “We urge the court to acknowledge the importance of marital equal rights and grant homosexual citizens their right to get married.”
The nation’s gay and lesbian groups have been urging the government for years to make same-sex unions legal.
Last year, organizers said about 100,000 gays and lesbians and their supporters marched in the largest rally of its kind in Asia to push for the legalization of same-sex unions.
The Mainland Affairs Council (MAC) yesterday said it is fully aware of the situation following reports that the son of ousted Chinese politician Bo Xilai (薄熙來) has arrived in Taiwan and is to marry a Taiwanese. Local media reported that Bo Guagua (薄瓜瓜), son of the former member of the Political Bureau of the Central Committee of the Communist Party of China, is to marry the granddaughter of Luodong Poh-Ai Hospital founder Hsu Wen-cheng (許文政). The pair met when studying abroad and arranged to get married this year, with the wedding breakfast to be held at The One holiday resort in Hsinchu
The Taipei Zoo on Saturday said it would pursue legal action against a man who was filmed climbing over a railing to tease and feed spotted hyenas in their enclosure earlier that day. In videos uploaded to social media on Saturday, a man can be seen climbing over a protective railing and approaching a ledge above the zoo’s spotted hyena enclosure, before dropping unidentified objects down to two of the animals. The Taipei Zoo in a statement said the man’s actions were “extremely inappropriate and even illegal.” In addition to monitoring the hyenas’ health, the zoo would collect evidence provided by the public
‘SIGN OF DANGER’: Beijing has never directly named Taiwanese leaders before, so China is saying that its actions are aimed at the DPP, a foundation official said National Security Bureau (NSB) Director-General Tsai Ming-yen (蔡明彥) yesterday accused Beijing of spreading propaganda, saying that Chinese President Xi Jinping (習近平) had singled out President William Lai (賴清德) in his meeting with US President Joe Biden when talking about those whose “true nature” seek Taiwanese independence. The Biden-Xi meeting took place on the sidelines of the APEC summit in Peru on Saturday. “If the US cares about maintaining peace across the Taiwan Strait, it is crucial that it sees clearly the true nature of Lai and the ruling Democratic Progressive Party (DPP) in seeking Taiwanese independence, handles the Taiwan question with extra
A road safety advocacy group yesterday called for reforms to the driver licensing and retraining system after a pedestrian was killed and 15 other people were injured in a two-bus collision in Taipei. “Taiwan’s driver’s licenses are among the easiest to obtain in the world, and there is no mandatory retraining system for drivers,” Taiwan Vision Zero Alliance, a group pushing to reduce pedestrian fatalities, said in a news release. Under the regulations, people who have held a standard car driver’s license for two years and have completed a driver training course are eligible to take a test
RSS