The Faith and Hope League, a new Christian-focused political party, yesterday said that its referendum petition drive for a national vote on “family protection” has garnered more than 150,000 signatures in less than 30 days, crossing the 100,000-signature threshold needed for a referendum proposal.
The petition asks that any amendment to the Civil Code on marriage, parents and children, custody and family, which concern the “husband-wife relationship, consanguinity and familial ethics,” not be passed without first being put to a national vote.
The petition is seen as a counterproposal to calls for changes to the wording of the Civil Code that could pave the way for recognition of same-sex marriages.
The league said the marriage and family system is “crucial to future generations’ welfare and kinship, while consanguinity is the keystone of a nation’s development.”
“While collecting petition signatures and interacting with the public, our staff found that most people have no idea that an amendment to the Civil Code regarding marriage being a union between one man and one woman has been discussed in the legislature, while some said that ‘diverse family formation’ is only about same-sex marriage and could not accept the idea after further understanding what three draft bills of ‘diverse family formation’ are about,” the group said.
The draft bills cover same-sex marriage, a partnership system and a non-biologically related family system.
The league said a referendum is the only chance for such significant issues to be openly discussed.
“While only same-sex marriage has been proposed among the three bills, the issues that have not been discussed also have support from parties and politicians,” it said.
“Over the past few years, social activists have often used words such as ‘diversity,’ ‘equality’ and ‘friendliness’ to disguise extremely radical ideas and positions, forming social pressure through online opinion, which has caused political parties and politicians to bow to them,” the party said.
“The government should have a comprehensive and concrete family policy, a policy that would make the family mainstream,” Faith and Hope League legislator-at-large candidate Fong Pei (馮珮) said.
“It is difficult to call a referendum in Taiwan, as the second-stage threshold requires 1 million signatures, but since we have received about 160,000 in a month, we believe we can cross the million threshold,” league co-chairwoman Joanna Lei (雷倩) said.
The petition drive created controversy earlier this month when some petition forms were distributed in elementary and high schools, with one parent saying that the forms were distributed to students to give to their parents.
A group from National Taichung Girls’ Senior High School said on Facebook that some parents were campaigning at the school on a sports day, saying that the ideas put forth in the petition would be good for children, who are being “brainwashed.”
A student newspaper criticized the distribution of the petition to students, saying that while free speech was a right in this nation, it was “outrageous when rights are used to batter the rights of others.”
TRAGEDY: An expert said that the incident was uncommon as the chance of a ground crew member being sucked into an IDF engine was ‘minuscule’ A master sergeant yesterday morning died after she was sucked into an engine during a routine inspection of a fighter jet at an air base in Taichung, the Air Force Command Headquarters said. The officer, surnamed Hu (胡), was conducting final landing checks at Ching Chuan Kang (清泉崗) Air Base when she was pulled into the jet’s engine for unknown reasons, the air force said in a news release. She was transported to a hospital for emergency treatment, but could not be revived, it said. The air force expressed its deepest sympathies over the incident, and vowed to work with authorities as they
BITTERLY COLD: The inauguration ceremony for US president-elect Donald Trump has been moved indoors due to cold weather, with the new venue lacking capacity A delegation of cross-party lawmakers from Taiwan, led by Legislative Speaker Han Kuo-yu (韓國瑜), for the inauguration of US president-elect Donald Trump, would not be able to attend the ceremony, as it is being moved indoors due to forecasts of intense cold weather in Washington tomorrow. The inauguration ceremony for Trump and US vice president-elect JD Vance is to be held inside the Capitol Rotunda, which has a capacity of about 2,000 people. A person familiar with the issue yesterday said although the outdoor inauguration ceremony has been relocated, Taiwan’s legislative delegation has decided to head off to Washington as scheduled. The delegation
A tourist who was struck and injured by a train in a scenic area of New Taipei City’s Pingsi District (平溪) on Monday might be fined for trespassing on the tracks, the Railway Police Bureau said yesterday. The New Taipei City Fire Department said it received a call at 4:37pm on Monday about an incident in Shifen (十分), a tourist destination on the Pingsi Railway Line. After arriving on the scene, paramedics treated a woman in her 30s for a 3cm to 5cm laceration on her head, the department said. She was taken to a hospital in Keelung, it said. Surveillance footage from a
Another wave of cold air would affect Taiwan starting from Friday and could evolve into a continental cold mass, the Central Weather Administration (CWA) said yesterday. Temperatures could drop below 10°C across Taiwan on Monday and Tuesday next week, CWA forecaster Chang Chun-yao (張竣堯) said. Seasonal northeasterly winds could bring rain, he said. Meanwhile, due to the continental cold mass and radiative cooling, it would be cold in northern and northeastern Taiwan today and tomorrow, according to the CWA. From last night to this morning, temperatures could drop below 10°C in northern Taiwan, it said. A thin coat of snow
RSS