Huge Crowd Turns Out for Taiwan Pride Parade

Reuters/Tyrone Siu

From Quartz:

Months after a court decision paved the way for Taiwan to become the first nation in Asia to legalize same-sex marriage, a record number of people took part in Taipei over the weekend (Oct. 28) for the city’s annual LGBT pride parade.

Estimates for turnout were well over 100,000 people, compared to about 80,000 last year, with many coming from other countries in Asia. The official theme (link in Chinese) for this year’s parade, the 15th Taipei pride parade, was “make love, not war—sex ed is the way to go,” in the hope that more education can broaden the space for sexual equality in society.

A Taiwan court ruled in May that the existing law that bans same-sex marriage is unconstitutional and that action should be taken to make the relevant legal amendments within two years, but the country has yet to move forward to formally enshrine marriage equality into law. In July, local government restrictions on same-sex partnership registrations were lifted, but the rights to same-sex unions are still not equal to heterosexual partnerships.

While Taiwan remains years ahead of its regional peers, including Hong Kong and Australia, in terms of LGBT rights, many Taiwanese remain opposed to same-sex marriage, and rights groups say that anti-LGBT groups have ratcheted up the pressure on schools not to teach content on gender equality and related topics.

People at Taipei’s pride parade on Oct. 28, 2017. (Reuters/Tyrone Siu)

Can we marry already? (Reuters/Tyrone Siu)

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