Taiwanese Parliament considers same-sex marriage for the first time
For the first time, the Taiwanese Parliament on Monday considered legislation to legalise same-sex marriage.
The proposed amendment to the Civil Code was debated on Monday, in what is the first legislation of its kind to be debated in East Asia.
Cheng Li-chiun, a politician with the Opposition Democratic Progressive Party, drafted the bill, and described current laws as discriminatory and unfair.
“No one deserves to be deprived of their rights at birth to be on an equal footing with others just because of their psychological or biological differences,” she said of the law which currently defines marriage as specifically between one man and one woman.
“If we cannot break the cycle of discrimination, then everyone could become a victim of discrimination because of their respective differences,” she continued
The bill proposes changes to the Code, to replace the terms “man and woman” and “husband and wife” with the gender neutral “two parties” and “spouses”. It proposes that terms such as “father and mother” would be replaced with “parents”.
