Taiwan is all set be the first Asian country to legalise same-sex marriage. This comes after the land marking move by the island’s constitutional court.
The court said existing laws stipulating that wedlock must be between a man and a woman “was in violation of both the people’s freedom of marriage….and the people’s right to equality”.
“Sexual orientation is an immutable characteristic that is immutable to change,” said the court, also known as the Judicial Yuan.
“The freedom of marriage for two persons of the same sex…..will constitute the collective basis, together with opposite-sex marriage, for a stable society.”
The ruling is a first for the world’s largest continent, where more conservative countries including China do not recognise same-sex unions and in some cases are taking an ever harder line against homosexuality.
It also confirms Taiwan’s reputation as one of Asia’s most socially liberal societies.
“This is definitely one of the most exciting moments in the history of LGBT rights in Taiwan,” said Leslie Li, a student at National Taiwan University in Taipei.
The big winners are people like Chi Chai-Wei, a Taiwanese LGBTQ rights activist who has been fighting to marry his partner for more than 30 years.
The Taiwanese high court’s ruling was blunt. “The provisions” of Taiwan’s current civil code on marriage, the legal ruling read, “do not allow two persons of the same sex to create a permanent union of intimate and exclusive nature for the committed purpose of managing a life together.”
The court ruled that those provisions privileged heterosexual Taiwanese over their same-sex counterparts — and made some more equal before the law than others.
The court then went further, dictating that within two years a new law needed to be on the books that would allow full freedom to marry. If no specific law appears before that time, same-sex couples will, by default, simply be allowed to register in the same manner as their straight friends.
The issue, the court underscored, was one of “human dignity.”
Now legislators will be tasked with coming up with a law specifically allowing same-sex marriage, or they will need to amend the current civil code to include gay men and lesbians. LGBTQ activists hope for the latter, as there is concern about half-measures that would still institutionalise inequality (like approving same-sex unions but barring gay and lesbian couples from adopting children).
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