Taiwan’s First Same-Sex Buddhist Marriage5115813

The marriage over the weekend of a Taiwanese lesbian couple in the island’s first Buddhist same-sex wedding has sparked debate about just how far Taiwanese society has progressed in its treatment of the gay community.

Huang Mei-yu and Yu Ya-ting, both 30, exchanged vows at a Buddhist monastery in Guangyin Township in northern Taiwan on Saturday in a ceremony attended by more than 100 guests but not the couple’s parents, according to local media reports.

Taiwan has long been celebrated as for its embrace of lesbian, gay, bisexual and transgender (LGBT) people. Host to the biggest gay pride parade in Asia each year, the capital city of Taipei was named one of Asia’s top 10 gay-friendly travel destinations in May by the website gaytravel.com.

When he was mayor of Taipei, Taiwanese president Ma Ying-jeou even presided over several group gay weddings – an act that would have been almost unimaginable as late as 1997, when gay men were still subject to identity checks in certain parts of the city.

But Taiwan falls short, activists say, when it comes to taking what many regards as the most important step in protecting gay rights: legalizing same-sex marriage.

“Public awareness and acceptance of homosexual community is rising, but the fight for legalization of for same-sex marriage remains an uphill battle,” said Kuan Yu, a staff member at the Taiwan Lesbian, Gay, Bisexual and Transgender Family Rights Advocacy, the group that helped organized the wedding.

Despite Mr. Ma’s past a gay rights advocate, the president’s party, the Kuomintang (or Nationalist Party), has shied away from pushing the legalization of gay marriage.

In 2006, legislator Hsiao Bi-khim of the opposition Democratic Progressive Party proposed a bill to recognize same-sex marriages but it was returned due to insufficient signatures. Since then, neither party has made any new efforts to revive the proposal.

Ms. Kuan, 29, who came out of the closet to her family two years ago, said the community doesn’t expect any headway to be made in the near term but will still push for a passage of the bill in the next legislative session starting September.

“Our goal is to draw attention to the issue of universal human rights to be with the person you love and to stir up discussion on the issue,” she said.

James Yang, a spokesman for Gin Gin Store, one of the first bookstores dedicated to the LGBT community and sexology in the Chinese-speaking world, blames the legislators of turning a deaf ear. “The legislators are representatives of the people’s will and how much have they done much to represent our interest? Not a whole lot,” he said.

That’s unfair, said Wu Yu-sheng, a KMT lawmaker, who argued the gay community is the one that has been slow about promoting their cause.

“Many of my colleagues and I are open to discussing the issue, but I have never received any request from the gay rights lobbying groups to have a discussion,” he said.

The debate surrounding same-sex marriage in Taiwan has nothing to do with intolerance of different sexual orientations, but is about pragmatic issues such as inheritance and child rearing, Mr. Wu said, adding “it will take a long while before a consensus is reached.”

In the absence of legal recognition, will other gay couples follow Huang and Yu’s example and walk the Buddhist path toward marriage?

Chao Shi-hui, the Buddhist master that performed Saturday’s wedding, said there is no hard rule on same-sex couples in Buddhism, which holds that the central tenets in any strong relationship are purity and selflessness – qualities that aren’t determined by sexual orientation.

“What they [Ms. Huang and Ms. Yu] did was very inspiring,” Ms. Chao said. “But I haven’t received any other requests for more gay weddings because, truthfully, courageous people like them are still quite few.”

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