After long struggle, same-sex couples in Taiwan have marriages recognized
TAIPEI, Taiwan — Typically drab and nondescript, this city’s Xinyi District household registration office exploded with life and color Friday morning.
Taiwanese and foreign reporters surrounded the office’s main desk to witness history, as Taiwan became the first nation in Asia to recognize same-sex marriages.
While office workers took in the spectacle, one couple after another exercised their new right to register their unions. As cameras snapped away, Jennifer Lu, the chief coordinator of Marriage Equality Coalition Taiwan, politely but firmly kept the media circus at bay, ensuring that the newly recognized newlyweds had enough space.
For Lu, Friday’s events were the culmination of a 2½-year struggle to obtain marriage rights for Taiwan’s LGBT citizens. The registrations came exactly a week after Taiwan’s legislature made headlines worldwide by voting to recognize same-sex marriage.
Lu described the week as “exhausting and overwhelming,” with reporters from around the world seeking comment from her.
Since the vote, she said, there has been an outpouring of love and acceptance across Taiwan.
“I’m so moved by the love stories that people have been sharing on the internet,” she said. “Many LGBT people in Taiwan have said that even though they don’t have plans to marry, they now feel accepted by their country.”
Alongside Lu, Chi Chiawei, the white-haired and bespectacled godfather of Taiwan’s gay rights movement, beamed as he took in the scene. In 1986, when now-democratic Taiwan was under brutal martial law, Chi was imprisoned for coming out as gay. Thirty-three years later, his battle is still not over.
“Progress is good,” he said. “More progress is even better.”
Friday’s marriage registrations capped three years of hope and disappointment for Taiwan’s LGBT community. The struggle began in earnest in 2016 with the election of Tsai Ing-wen, the first Taiwanese president to voice approval for same-sex marriage.
But months after Tsai assumed the presidency, it appeared that same-sex marriage was not a policy priority. In the 2017 legislative session, Taiwanese conservatives mobilized to oppose any attempt at legalization.
But the issue gained urgency in May 2017, when Taiwan’s constitutional court ruled that the civil code, which defines marriage as being between a man and a woman, was unconstitutional on the grounds that it discriminated against same-sex couples. The court gave the legislature two years to pass laws that would address the issue; otherwise, after Friday, same-sex partners would legally be able to register as married couples.