January 9,2004 * Ju st out 2 j
i'iU iU 'in e t e s
Taiwan is planning to legalize same-sex marriage,
President Chen Shui-bian says
TA IW A N
ueer rights groups protested Dec. 23 outside
the headquarters of Taiwan’s ruling Demo
cratic Progressive Party demanding that a
maker he punished for anti-gay remarks and that
the government present a timetable for enacting
protections, The China Post reported.
Lawmaker Ho Shui-sheng had called for a
ban on gay marriage, saying the unions would
destroy the nation because same-sex couples
cannot reproduce. He later apologized, saying he
was speaking from a “medical” point of view and
is not prejudiced against homosexuals.
More than 30 groups reportedly tcxik part in
the demonstration, including the Taiwan
Tongzhi (gay) Hotline Association and the
Gender-Sexuality Rights Association Taiwan.
In November, Taiwanese President Chen
Shui-bian said the government is planning to
legalize same-sex marriage. “The human rights
of homosexuals have been gradually recognized
by countries around the world. To protect their
rights, [gay] people should have the right to wed
and have a family based on their free will.”
The protesters said the government needs to
turn its words into action.
Q
|
bout 36 percent of gays and lesbians in
Taiwan have been harassed or discriminat
ed against because of their sexuality, a survey has
found.
The Taiwan Gay and Lesbian Human Rights
Association questioned 1,641 homosexuals
along with a smattering of heterosexuals and
bisexuals. About 13 percent of the 336 hetero
sexuals quizzed said they had been harassed after
being misidentified as gay.
According to a summary of the research pub
lished in The Taipei Times, 36 percent of the
harassment cases occurred at universities, 32
percent at home, 24 percent at work and the
remainder elsewhere.
sure in Parliament, where it is expected to pass
with help from the Socialists and the Greens,
Reuters reported. The change is opposed by
three parties: the French-speaking Liberals, the
right-wing Vlaams Blok and the French-
speaking Christian Democrats.
In a statement, the Dutch-speaking Liberals
said, “Research and the practical experience of
countries which already allow adoption by
same-sex and bisexual couples show that chil
dren raised by same-sex parents are not affected
in a negative way."
Same-sex couples also have access to full
marriage in the Netherlands and in the Canadi
an provinces of Ontario and British Columbia,
where courts opened up the institution in 2003.
Canada’s Parliament is expected to legalize
same-sex marriage nationwide sometime this
year, barring any unanticipated changes in the
political or judicial landscape.
law
TH E V A TIC A N
ope John Paul II attacked gays again
Dec. 28.
Speaking during his traditional Sunday greet
ing, the pontiff said: “In our times, a misunder-
sttxxl sense of rights has sometimes disturbed the
nature of the family institution and conjugal
bond itself. It is necessary that at every level, the
efforts of those who believe in the importance of
the family based on matrimony unite.”
The Vatican declared war on same-sex mar
riage and civil union and domestic partnership
laws July 30.
The church’s Congregation for the Doctrine
of the Faith asserted: "There are absolutely no
grounds for considering homosexual unions to
he in any way similar or even remotely analo
gous to G od’s plan for marriage and family. Mar
riage is holy, while homosexual acts go against
the natural moral law. Homosexual acts close
the sexual act to the gift of life.... Under no cir
cumstances can they he approved.
“The >se who would move from tolerance to
the legitimization of specific rights for cohabiting
homosexual persons need to be reminded that
the approval or legalization of evil is something
far different from the toleration of evil,” the
church warned. “When legislation in favor of the
recognition of homosexual unions is proposed for
the first time in a legislative assembly, the
Catholic lawmaker has a moral duty to express
his opposition clearly and publicly and to vote
against it. To vote in favor of a law so harmful to
the common gtxxl is gravely immoral.”
Letting gay couples adopt children, the dec
laration added, amounts to child abuse.
“Allowing children to he adopted by persons
living in [same-sex] unions would actually mean
doing violence to these children, in the sense
that their condition of dependency would he
used to place them in an environment that is
not conducive to their full human develop
ment,” it said. “This is gravely immoral.”
B O LIV IA
embers of Bolivia’s National Network of
People Living with HIV/AIDS disnipted
a speech Dec. 1 by Vice Minister of Health
Oscar Larrain in Santa Cruz, the nation’s
second-largest city.
As Larrain began his address to the nation’s first
World AIDS Day ceremony, 19 members of the
group stcxxl and brandished placards hearing cross
es and names of group members who have died.
“We are not here to celebrate World AIDS
Day,” activist Julio César Aguilera said. “We are
here because this is a day of mourning for us. Our
friends continue to die because our government
will not give them anti-retroviral medications.”
Activist Violeta Ross seized the microphone
from Larrain and declared that people living
M
Belgian Prime Minister Guy Verhofstadt wants
to give same-sex couples access to adoption
B E LG IU M
B
elgium, one of the three nations in the
world where same-sex couples have access
to full marriage, is planning to erase the final
distinction between same- and opposite-sex
matrimony: access to adoption.
Prime Minister Guy Verhofstadt’s Dutch
speaking Liberal Party will introduce the mea
Continued on Page 23
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