{"id":23100,"date":"2018-11-24T21:22:55","date_gmt":"2018-11-24T21:22:55","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/qatar-news.org\/qatarnewsEn\/?p=23100"},"modified":"2018-11-24T21:22:55","modified_gmt":"2018-11-24T21:22:55","slug":"same-sex-marriage-advocates-lose-taiwan-referendums","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/qatar-news.org\/qatarnewsEn\/?p=23100","title":{"rendered":"Same-sex marriage advocates lose Taiwan referendums"},"content":{"rendered":"
\n

In a setback for LGBT advocates, voters in Taiwan<\/a>\u00a0have backed\u00a0a series of initiatives opposing marriage equality, dealing a major blow to the island’s reputation as a rights trailblazer.<\/p>\n

A referendum on whether marriage should be recognised only as “the union between one man and one woman”<\/span>\u00a0in Taiwan’s Civil Code won more than seven million votes on Saturday.<\/p>\n

Another vote, calling for same-sex unions to be regulated under a separate law, gained the support of more than six million people.<\/p>\n

Gay rights<\/a>\u00a0activists had proposed that the Civil Code should give same-sex couples equal marriage rights, but only garnered three million votes.<\/span><\/p>\n

Taiwan’s top court legalised same-sex marriage in May 2017, the first place in Asia to do so.<\/p>\n

The court said its ruling must be implemented within two years, but the government made little progress in the face of opposition from conservative groups.<\/p>\n

Overall, Taiwanese voters participated in 10 referendums on Saturday, apart from voting in\u00a0<\/span>local elections<\/a>\u00a0that delivered a defeat to the ruling Democratic Progressive Party (DPP) and prompted President Tsai Ing-wen to\u00a0<\/span>resign as party leader<\/a>.<\/span><\/p>\n

Major blow to LGBT rights<\/h2>\n
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<\/td>\n<\/tr>\n
Pro-LGBT marchers took to the streets in October before the referendum [Chiang Ying-ying\/AP Photo]<\/td>\n<\/tr>\n<\/tbody>\n<\/table>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n

The Coalition for the Happiness of our Next Generation, a “pro-family” group, called the results<\/span>\u00a0a “victory of all people who treasure family values”.<\/p>\n

The conservative group also beat gay rights activists on competing referendums about whether LGBT issues should be compulsory on the school curriculum. <\/p>\n

“Everyone used every single ‘yes’ vote to tell the authorities what are the mainstream public opinions,” the coalition said. <\/p>\n

Jennifer Lu, a spokesperson for Marriage Equality Coalition Taiwan, said they were saddened by what she described as the “absurd referendums” and blamed government “incompetence” for allowing the votes to go ahead. <\/p>\n

“The regression of gender equality deals the most severe blow to Taiwan’s democratic values,” she added.<\/p>\n

Although the government had said the referendum results will not affect the court’s original decision to legalise gay marriage, pro-gay campaigners worry that their newly won rights will be weakened. <\/p>\n

The court did not specify how it wanted gay marriage to be implemented, leaving room for conservative groups to call for separate regulations.<\/p>\n

With all three conservative referendums passing the threshold of 25 percent of eligible voters, the government must take steps to reflect the result, according to the\u00a0referendum law.<\/p>\n

Last month, nearly 130,000 people in the capital, Taipei, had participated in a massive gay pride parade<\/a>, the largest in Asia, in advance of the referendums.<\/p>\n

Rights group Amnesty International<\/a> had also urged the Taiwanese government not to “water down” same-sex marriage proposals in the face of a conservative win.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

In a setback for LGBT advocates, voters in Taiwan\u00a0have backed\u00a0a series of initiatives opposing marriage equality, dealing a major blow to the island’s reputation as a rights trailblazer. A referendum on whether marriage should be recognised only as “the union between one man and one woman”\u00a0in Taiwan’s Civil Code won more than seven million votes…<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":10,"featured_media":23101,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[2],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-23100","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-middle_east_news"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/qatar-news.org\/qatarnewsEn\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/23100","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/qatar-news.org\/qatarnewsEn\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/qatar-news.org\/qatarnewsEn\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/qatar-news.org\/qatarnewsEn\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/10"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/qatar-news.org\/qatarnewsEn\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=23100"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/qatar-news.org\/qatarnewsEn\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/23100\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/qatar-news.org\/qatarnewsEn\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/media\/23101"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/qatar-news.org\/qatarnewsEn\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=23100"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/qatar-news.org\/qatarnewsEn\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=23100"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/qatar-news.org\/qatarnewsEn\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=23100"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}