A Taiwanese-Macanese gay couple tied the knot in Taipei yesterday after winning a landmark legal case as they called for Taiwan to amend its laws to allow same-sex marriages with all foreigners.
Taiwan is seen as leading the LGBTQ rights movement in Asia, as it became the first Asian country to legalise same-sex marriages in 2019. However, restrictions do not allow Taiwanese to marry foreigners from countries where same-sex unions are not legally recognized.
Ting Tse-yan (丁則言) and his partner, Guzifer Leong (梁展輝), from Macau, challenged that restriction in court earlier this year and won, allowing them to officially register their marriage.
Photo: CNA
However, the ruling applies only to their marriage, and other same-sex couples wanting to marry continue to face restrictions and legal challenges.
“This is an initial success,” the 29-year-old Ting said. “Other international couples still can’t marry and we call for full recognition.”
“We hope our registration today will let the government see that marriage equality has yet to be realized,” said Leong, 33.
The couple were able to wed because a court in May ordered a government office to record their marriage, overturning the office’s 2019 rejection of their registration.
“We’ve waited for two years and finally we can get married,” Ting said after the registration, showing his new ID card with his spouse’s name on it.
The couple have cofounded a group to help more than 100 Taiwanese whose partners are from countries where same-sex marriage is not legal, including China, Japan, Thailand and Vietnam.
“Marriage is a basic human right and it’s unimaginable that there is discriminatory treatment because one’s partner comes from a certain country,” the couple’s lawyer, Victoria Hsu (許秀雯), said. “Would any heterosexual citizens accept a situation in which they were allowed to wed an American but not a Japanese?”
Hsu’s advocacy group, the Taiwan Alliance to Promote Civil Partnership Rights, has appealed to the Control Yuan to look into the issue, she said.
Taiwan is home to a thriving LGBTQ community, and a record 200,000 people attended a Pride march in Taipei in 2019 to celebrate the legalisation of same-sex marriage. Nearly 6,000 same-sex couples have wed since then.
That law came about after Taiwan’s top court ruled that denying same-sex couples the right to marry was discriminatory and unconstitutional.
The issue proved to be divisive, and the law contains restrictions pushed for by conservatives, including limited adoption rights.
WANG RELEASED: A police investigation showed that an organized crime group allegedly taught their clients how to pretend to be sick during medical exams Actor Darren Wang (王大陸) and 11 others were released on bail yesterday, after being questioned for allegedly dodging compulsory military service or forging documents to help others avoid serving. Wang, 33, was catapulted into stardom for his role in the coming-of-age film Our Times (我的少女時代). Lately, he has been focusing on developing his entertainment career in China. The New Taipei District Prosecutors’ Office last month began investigating an organized crime group that is allegedly helping men dodge compulsory military service using falsified documents. Police in New Taipei City Yonghe Precinct at the end of last month arrested the main suspect,
A cat named Mikan (蜜柑) has brought in revenue of more than NT$10 million (US$305,390) for the Kaohsiung MRT last year. Mikan, born on April 4, 2020, was a stray cat before being adopted by personnel of Kaohsiung MRT’s Ciaotou Sugar Refinery Station. Mikan was named after a Japanese term for mandarin orange due to his color and because he looks like an orange when curled up. He was named “station master” of Ciaotou Sugar Refinery Station in September 2020, and has since become famous. With Kaohsiung MRT’s branding, along with the release of a set of cultural and creative products, station master Mikan
Eleven people, including actor Darren Wang (王大陸), were taken into custody today for questioning regarding the evasion of compulsory military service and document forgery, the New Taipei District Prosecutors’ Office said. Eight of the people, including Wang, are suspected of evading military service, while three are suspected of forging medical documents to assist them, the report said. They are all being questioned by police and would later be transferred to the prosecutors’ office for further investigation. Three men surnamed Lee (李), Chang (張) and Lin (林) are suspected of improperly assisting conscripts in changing their military classification from “stand-by
LITTORAL REGIMENTS: The US Marine Corps is transitioning to an ‘island hopping’ strategy to counterattack Beijing’s area denial strategy The US Marine Corps (USMC) has introduced new anti-drone systems to bolster air defense in the Pacific island chain amid growing Chinese military influence in the region, The Telegraph reported on Sunday. The new Marine Air Defense Integrated System (MADIS) Mk 1 is being developed to counter “the growing menace of unmanned aerial systems,” it cited the Marine Corps as saying. China has constructed a powerful defense mechanism in the Pacific Ocean west of the first island chain by deploying weapons such as rockets, submarines and anti-ship missiles — which is part of its anti-access/area denial (A2/AD) strategy against adversaries — the
RSS