Next year, the first place in Asia to legalize same-sex marriage might be Taiwan, a small island nation in East Asia that has a population of 23.55 million. What are the factors that have brought Taiwan to this step? What are the potential reasons for Taiwan to achieve marriage equality? Here are the thoughts of six experts from diverse fields.
In Taiwan's environment, we have diverse people. We have aboriginal people and Han people from China, which include Hakka and Hoklo. Hakka and Hoklo also have different ancestors, so they speak differently. Recently, we have more new inhabitants and immigrant workers. We are accustomed to people with different colors, languages, living styles. Therefore, we are pretty open to LGBT people.
I feel like we can be the first country to have this kind of legal system because I think our past experience being colonized and being ruled by very authoritarian parties, that kind of makes us understand the feeling of being oppressed as a group of people.
A lot of Chinese parents, they really believe in Buddhism. And when they find out that their children are LGBT, they will ... say, well, maybe this is his karma. This is something from his previous life. So he is a gay man. If that's his karma, then as their parents, you have to support him and to learn the lesson that he has to learn in this life. Otherwise this will carry on to his next life. ...Buddhism can be an alternative way of understanding LGBT issues.
Taiwan is internationally isolated, but Taiwan is trying very hard in many aspects to kind of want to become a model nation. ... I think we wanted to set a distance apart from China in a way where we wanted to live a better or more democratic life. ...Although the United Nations did not accept Taiwan as a country now, legally or politically, we wanted to become like a modern society where human rights are protected.
Because of freedom of speech and press, it allows LGBT people to speak out and be shown on media whether in a good or bad way. Relatively speaking, our freedom of speech and press are better than other Asian countries. The reason LGBT movements can reach this level is the democracy and freedom. Moreover, LGBT movements have been going here for 30 years.
The Gender Equity Education Act provides us a good way forward. It teaches the young generation to treat the LGBT community better. ...They are more open to the LGBT community than the elders. The older generations are relatively more conservative.
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