In December 2001, this newspaper ran an editorial with a headline similar to this one. Taiwan, along with the rest of the world, has changed immeasurably since then, but adultery remains a criminal offense in Taiwan under Article 239 of the Criminal Code.
This nation is one of the few in the world to still consider adultery a criminal, rather than civil, offense, with punishment of up to one year in prison, but hopefully this could finally change in the foreseeable future.
The Council of Grand Justices on Tuesday is to begin hearing arguments on the constitutionality of that article, following petitions from 14 judges and a defendant in an adultery case.
While previous reforms have failed, a ruling by the grand justices could once again be the impetus for the Legislative Yuan to change the law, much as the justices were with Constitutional Interpretation No. 748 on May 24, 2017, which ruled that prohibitions against same-sex marriage were unconstitutional.
As with that ruling, the grand justices will be reviewing Article 239 in light of the legislature’s 2009 ratification of the UN International Covenant on Economic, Social and Cultural Rights and the UN International Covenant on Civil and Political Rights, and the government’s implementation of those laws.
The Ministry of Justice tried to overhaul the law in the mid-1990s, supported by the Awakening Foundation and other civic groups. There have been other campaigns since then, but defenders of the “status quo” have argued that changing the law would only encourage extramarital affairs, leading to the breakdown of more marriages and families, and that the law gives wives leverage against errant husbands in divorce cases.
The only real change to the idea that adultery should be punished under criminal law since the early years of the Republic of China was that in 1934, the Legislative Yuan amended the law so that both men and women could be held criminally liable; prior to that, only women were. And yet, it is women who have continued to suffer disproportionately under the law: They have been prosecuted at a higher rate than men, and therefore have higher rates of conviction.
This is because under the law the “innocent spouse” must file charges against both the errant spouse and the spouse’s partner in adultery. Data from district prosecutors’ offices show that while more than half of accusations against a husband end up being dropped, the withdrawal rate for accusations against a wife is a little more than 40 percent, and a little more than 30 percent for accusations against female third parties.
Women have been more willing to withdraw charges against their husbands — be it for the sake of their family or for financial reasons — than men are against their wives, and while women might be willing to forgive their husbands, they are more likely to continue to push for charges against their husbands’ mistresses or lovers.
Yet to win such convictions, there must be evidence of adultery, which has led to salacious media reports over the years of police and private detectives breaking into hotel rooms to catch allegedly errant spouses in flagrante delicto, and gather evidence, such as video footage, photographs or used condoms.
Police have better things to do than try to catch errant spouses, and criminal prosecutions are no solution to marital woes.
A change to the law is long overdue: Not just because Article 239 is a violation of human rights, but because criminalization of adultery — much like the imposition of the death penalty in murder cases — has failed to deter illegal behavior.
US$18.278 billion is a simple dollar figure; one that’s illustrative of the first Trump administration’s defense commitment to Taiwan. But what does Donald Trump care for money? During President Trump’s first term, the US defense department approved gross sales of “defense articles and services” to Taiwan of over US$18 billion. In September, the US-Taiwan Business Council compared Trump’s figure to the other four presidential administrations since 1993: President Clinton approved a total of US$8.702 billion from 1993 through 2000. President George W. Bush approved US$15.614 billion in eight years. This total would have been significantly greater had Taiwan’s Kuomintang-controlled Legislative Yuan been cooperative. During
Former president Ma Ying-jeou (馬英九) in recent days was the focus of the media due to his role in arranging a Chinese “student” group to visit Taiwan. While his team defends the visit as friendly, civilized and apolitical, the general impression is that it was a political stunt orchestrated as part of Chinese Communist Party (CCP) propaganda, as its members were mainly young communists or university graduates who speak of a future of a unified country. While Ma lived in Taiwan almost his entire life — except during his early childhood in Hong Kong and student years in the US —
Chinese Nationalist Party (KMT) lawmakers on Monday unilaterally passed a preliminary review of proposed amendments to the Public Officers Election and Recall Act (公職人員選罷法) in just one minute, while Democratic Progressive Party (DPP) legislators, government officials and the media were locked out. The hasty and discourteous move — the doors of the Internal Administration Committee chamber were locked and sealed with plastic wrap before the preliminary review meeting began — was a great setback for Taiwan’s democracy. Without any legislative discussion or public witnesses, KMT Legislator Hsu Hsin-ying (徐欣瑩), the committee’s convener, began the meeting at 9am and announced passage of the
In response to a failure to understand the “good intentions” behind the use of the term “motherland,” a professor from China’s Fudan University recklessly claimed that Taiwan used to be a colony, so all it needs is a “good beating.” Such logic is risible. The Central Plains people in China were once colonized by the Mongolians, the Manchus and other foreign peoples — does that mean they also deserve a “good beating?” According to the professor, having been ruled by the Cheng Dynasty — named after its founder, Ming-loyalist Cheng Cheng-kung (鄭成功, also known as Koxinga) — as the Kingdom of Tungning,
RSS