Support for same-sex marriage has reached about 56.5 percent, up from about 41 percent in 2020, polling results released by the Taiwan Equality Campaign on Friday showed.
This was a new high among Taiwanese, nearly five years after Taiwan legalized same-sex marriage.
Those who oppose same-sex marriage dropped from 48.7 percent in 2020 to 36.93 percent this year, the survey found.
Photo: Cheng I-Hwa, AFP
The group presented its survey one week after the Cabinet’s Department of Gender Equality released the results of its own survey, which found that 69.1 percent of respondents supported same-sex marriage.
However, Taiwan Equality Campaign’s survey also found that acceptance of seeing gay and lesbian couples kiss has hovered at about 60 percent and 50 percent respectively over the past four years.
Policies should be implemented to improve understanding of LGBTQ people and anti-discrimination laws should be amended, the group’s advocacy and civic engagement project manager Wong Yu-cing (翁鈺清) said.
The survey also found that the public’s support for international same-sex marriage (64.28 percent) and same-sex spouses’ adoption rights (66.14 percent) were up about 10 percentage points from the first poll.
Wong said this might be due to the legalization of these practices last year, adding that “changes in rules and regulations can lead to people’s support.”
It has been legal for same-sex couples to adopt children since the legislature amended the Act for Implementation of Judicial Yuan Interpretation No. 748 (司法院釋字第748號解釋施行法)last year.
About 61.37 percent and 46.04 percent of respondents said they support the right of same-sex female and male couples respectively to have children through artificial reproduction, both new highs.
The survey also found that 70.71 percent support the right of single women to have children through artificial reproduction.
Additionally, 60.63 percent said they could accept their children being LGBTQ, including 20.63 percent who said they were “very willing to accept” it, the poll found.
While 66.79 percent could accept councilors and lawmakers being LGBTQ, the rate dipped slightly to 62.52 percent for mayors and county magistrates.
Respondents’ attitudes largely correlated with their ages.
Whereas about 90 percent of respondents aged 18 to 39 said they could accept homosexual politicians, the number shrank to about 60 percent among people aged 45 to 54, and to only about 30 percent for people aged 65 or above.
The survey was conducted via telephone and mobile phone interviews from March 25 to 27 among people aged 18 or older in Taiwan’s 22 administrative regions.
A total of 1,082 valid samples were collected with a margin of error of 2.99 percentage points.
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