Taiwan's First Day of Legal Same-Sex Marriage: Registrations, Celebrations, Opposition, Banquets and Reflection

This road of struggle is far from over. On the contrary, it is only the starting point.

May 24, 2019: the first day same-sex marriage was legal in Taiwan.

By official count, 526 same-sex couples registered their marriages that day — 341 female couples and 185 male couples — nearly double the number who had booked appointments in advance.

Two years earlier, on the same date, the Grand Justices of Taiwan's Judicial Yuan ruled on whether the ban on same-sex marriage was constitutional: "The current Civil Code's failure to allow same-sex marriage is unconstitutional. The relevant authorities shall complete the amendment or enactment of the relevant laws within two years of the announcement of this interpretation. As for the form in which equal protection of the freedom to marry is achieved, that falls within the scope of legislative discretion." The ruling is known as Judicial Yuan Interpretation No. 748.

At 8:10 in the morning, Lai Heying and Lu Yiling arrived at the Xinyi District Household Registration Office in Taipei, less than a five-minute walk from Taipei 101.

Anyone off the street would have known something unusual was happening before reaching the door. Satellite news vans were parked outside, and people hauling big cameras hurried past.

Staff in formal dress worked a temporary counter under the stairs. On the table stood signs reading "Media Registration" and "Couples Check-In," along with a stack of marriage certificates signed by the singer A-Mei and the well-known gay-rights activist Chi Chia-wei — mementos for every couple registering that day.

"Registration is upstairs. If a couple's nametag has a yellow border, please don't film them — they can't appear on camera." Staff explained this to reporters one by one.

This was a press event run by the Marriage Equality Coalition, a nonprofit. It had arranged for 20 same-sex couples to register at the Xinyi District office, with a wedding party called "Happiness Starting Line" in the park next door.

Lai Heying and Lu Yiling had been together for ten years. As soon as they got together, they said, they decided it was for life. "But we did it in a strange order — wedding photos first, then partnership registration, and the marriage only now. Whatever we could do, we did. A bit like picking up whatever we found along the way." (Note: from June 2015, local governments across Taiwan gradually began allowing "same-sex partnership registration," which does not carry the legal force of marriage.)

"I thought I'd be 60 before I saw this day," said Lai Heying, who is 40.

Lai Heying's mother stood beside them in a black qipao, a small red flower pinned in her hair and another on her chest, smiling often and now and then reaching over to straighten her daughter's rainbow bow tie. She had taken the four a.m. high-speed train up from Tainan, she said, because she did not want to miss the most important day of her daughter's life.

"I especially feel that Taiwan today is blessed and at peace. Because the government did this, the love in Taiwan today is real love, out in the sunshine, not hiding in a corner," Lai's father told reporters.

Families like the Lais, who turned out in force, were still the exception. More often, friends stood in as witnesses; some couples were marrying before they had come out at all. Even Lu Yiling's parents had not fully accepted that she is gay.

Once all 20 couples had arrived, staff explained how the press conference would run and set the order of registration. A few couples the public already knew — the writer Chen Xue and her partner Zaocanren, the illustrator Yanshiji and the playwright Chien Li-ying — were placed near the front.

The office on the second floor was already packed with reporters from Taiwan and abroad; the organizers counted more than 150. Members of the public who had come in for ordinary paperwork found themselves stuck at the entrance behind the crowd.

The district office had set aside five counters for same-sex registrations, each with a rainbow flag on a stand — partly to make filming easier, partly to move people through faster.

Normally, registering a marriage takes half an hour. The couple then receives a reissued ID card with the spouse's name added under marital status.

Not today. After registering, every couple had to face the media and tell the story of coming out and falling in love all over again.

Nearly an hour passed before Lai Heying and Lu Yiling's turn came. By then Lan Shih-tsung, commissioner of Taipei's Department of Civil Affairs, and Chi Chia-wei had both arrived — the first to offer congratulations, the second to witness some of the marriages.

At pride parades and protests Chi Chia-wei had always worn a rainbow flag. Today he had put on his "battle dress": a red suit pinned with rainbow teddy bears of different sizes, said to refer to the persecution of minority groups in the United States.

He also had a pen.

On May 22, Taiwan's leader Tsai Ing-wen signed the special same-sex marriage law — formally the Act for Implementation of Judicial Yuan Interpretation No. 748 — and announced that it would take effect. She then wrote to Chi Chia-wei offering him the pen she had signed it with. He decided to use it to bless the couples registering that day.

When Lai Heying's parents saw Chi Chia-wei they were suddenly overcome. They patted him on the shoulder and said, "Thank you, truly." He smiled back, then handed Lai Heying and Lu Yiling the gift he had brought for them.

With the registration done and their new ID cards in hand, the two began calling each other "wife."

Then they walked to the park next door, already dressed up for a festive outdoor party: double-happiness characters, flowers, an arch, white veils, a red carpet lined with rainbow flags, big display boards tracing the history of the marriage-equality movement, and stalls nearby selling rainbow merchandise.

Everything went to plan: couple after couple walked the rainbow red carpet; foreign guests and politicians took the stage to speak; gifts were handed over and photographs taken. On stage, Chi Chia-wei said, "I know that for many people this day is ten-odd years late. For me it is thirty-three years late."

Taipei hit 30 degrees Celsius under a hard sun, and many couples were soaked through their formal clothes.

Lai Heying and Lu Yiling sat in the back row. They had chosen this day to register not only for what it meant, they said, but for a practical reason: "We'd already booked a honeymoon in South America for June. Now that we're registered, we can finally ask the company for proper marriage leave."

The Special Law Takes Effect, and Some Are Still Uneasy

Unlike the Xinyi District office, the other district offices held events too, but none on the same scale. Next to Xinyi, they looked like ordinary days.

At two in the afternoon a long line stood outside the Da'an District Household Registration Office, near Da'an Forest Park. The people in it were not there for same-sex marriage; they had come to file their taxes before the end of May. Some knew this was the day same-sex marriage became legal. Some had no idea.

Beside the line, a male couple who had just registered were posing for photographs with friends at the door.

They were Leo and Vincent, together four years, who had taken the afternoon off work to register. Their friends in Taipei all knew they were gay; their relatives back home in southern Taiwan knew nothing, let alone about the registration. Vincent said his family still could not accept the subject.

Coming out to family was one problem. The other, Leo said, was that the law itself felt uncertain. "On May 17 we took time off too, and waited outside the Legislative Yuan for the vote. We were afraid the version that passed wouldn't be this one. And with another election in Taiwan next year, we really were worried something could still change. So we came to register on the first day."

Theirs was not the only couple reasoning that way.

As calls for marriage equality have grown louder in recent years, conservative forces have surfaced too, and Taiwanese society has become more polarized. The smears and clashes that came with the bill's progress left some gay people with the feeling that they were about to lose it all. The only way to settle that anxiety was to make the legal relationship certain first.

Qiu Shirong, a secretary at the Da'an office, said 26 same-sex couples had booked appointments, but the actual number passed that before noon. The day was also an auspicious one for weddings in the traditional almanac, he added, so even opposite-sex marriages were above average.

After leaving Xinyi, Chi Chia-wei came to the Da'an office in the afternoon. Couples who had walked in off the street to register reacted as if they had spotted a film star. Some, close to tears, brought over their marriage certificates for him to sign and asked for photographs.

A middle-aged woman stood watching the counter handling same-sex registrations. "I'm against it," she said evenly. "They never think about how their parents feel." Then she turned back to wait for her number.

Apart from her, no one in the office reacted at all. Most did not even ask what was going on.

The office's volunteer was still at the door, asking people to wait patiently. Next to her lay the pamphlets on "Marriage Registration" and "Divorce Registration." Their contents had not been updated; the text still described a marriage between a man and a woman.

Qiu Shirong said the same-sex marriage bill had only been confirmed by the Legislative Yuan the previous Friday, May 17. Household-registration staff worked overtime up to the day before legalization to rewrite the systems and the forms. They had also been told to start telling the public that, same-sex or opposite-sex, it is all simply "marriage," with no distinction.

Getting here took more than 30 years.

On May 24, 2017, in heavy rain, close to ten thousand gay people waited outside the Legislative Yuan for the constitutional ruling. Chi Chia-wei, then 61, who had brought the case, told the Grand Justices in the Constitutional Court that he had "waited 41 years, 6 months and 24 days for this day."

The two-year countdown to legalization began, and the form the law protecting same-sex marriage should take became one of the most divisive questions in Taiwanese society. Campaigners against same-sex marriage spent NT$900 million (about 190 million yuan) on public messaging, trying to shape the legislation through referendums.

Last November, alongside Taiwan's "nine-in-one" local elections, that camp put forward the Love Family referendum, which asked for same-sex marriage to be protected by a separate special law. The marriage-equality camp answered with a counter-referendum asking for the Civil Code itself to be amended to protect same-sex marriage.

The two sides were nowhere near equal in resources, and the anti-gay camp campaigned on fear. The result came in: 7.65 million citizens voted for its "special law" proposal.

On counting day many gay people cried as they watched the numbers fall further behind. At the count, Chi Chia-wei told them not to lose heart: "On the surface it looks like we lost badly. But if you factor in what share of Taiwan's population is gay, we won big — that's how many straight people are supporting us."

Between the constitutional case and the referendum, gay rights in Taiwan were pulled toward both extremes of the spectrum and took a blow without precedent.

On February 21 this year, Taiwan's Executive Yuan published a draft Act for Implementation of Judicial Yuan Interpretation No. 748, whose protections for same-sex marriage differed little from the Civil Code. Outsiders read it as a gay-friendly special law.

Soon after, the Coalition for the Happiness of Our Next Generation and other groups opposed to same-sex marriage produced a draft Act for the Implementation of Referendum Item No. 12, introduced on their behalf by the KMT legislator Lai Shyh-bao; the DPP legislator Lin Tai-hua proposed a draft Act for the Implementation of Judicial Yuan Interpretation No. 748 and Referendum Item No. 12. Lai Shyh-bao's version went so far as to replace "same-sex marriage" with "same-sex union."

On May 17 the Legislative Yuan had to hold a final vote on all three drafts and decide which law gay couples would use from then on. Before the vote, Bloomberg Businessweek wrote: "In pushing same-sex marriage, Tsai Ing-wen is betting her political life."

That day, in a downpour, 40,000 people surrounded the Legislative Yuan, an umbrella in one hand and a placard in the other, chanting together: "I am gay! I am gay! I want to get married! I want to get married!"

When the votes were counted, the Executive Yuan's version — the Act for Implementation of Judicial Yuan Interpretation No. 748 — carried a majority. A week later, on May 24, gay couples in Taiwan would be able to use it to "marry" their partners.

The long-awaited day of legal same-sex marriage had come.

May 17, the International Day Against Homophobia: 40,000 Wait in the Rain for the Vote

On May 16, 2019, the Marriage Equality Coalition posted a notice on its fan page: "The last gathering before same-sex marriage becomes law."

Zhang Tianlan, 19 (not his real name), saw it online. Without telling his parents, he got permission to miss school and at eight the next morning went to the Legislative Yuan on Qingdao East Road in Taipei.

At nine on May 17 the legislature began voting on a series of bills, among them the special same-sex marriage law everyone was watching. The date was also the International Day Against Homophobia.

The night before, Premier Su Tseng-chang wrote on Facebook: "I ask everyone to cast the decisive vote at tomorrow's historic moment, and let Taiwanese society take a step forward. History will remember you." The other side, just as firmly, urged legislators not to vote for the Executive Yuan's version.

It rained in Taipei that day. From eight in the morning, crowds poured out of the subway exits near the legislature, all walking the same way.

Zhang Tianlan stood among them in a white T-shirt, grey shorts and a white baseball cap, a rainbow band on his right wrist and a placard in his left hand that read, "We can't lose this vote."

Unlike the people around him, who had come in groups, he was alone. He stood not far from the stage and, however hard the rain came down, never moved. He watched the broadcast screen on stage, shouted the slogans after the emcee, and at times cried. Before coming, he said, he had been badly worried about how the vote would go.

Two months before last year's referendum, his family could not understand why he cared so much about it, and he took the opening to come out to them. They accepted it at the time, he said, but still told him to keep a low profile and not wear rainbow accessories in the street. He knew they meant well; when he talked about it he would also mention the "anti-gay forces" in society, while saying he did not think Taiwan had reached anything so dangerous.

Two hours in, legislators inside were making speeches on the special law; outside, the organizers handed a rose to each person in the front rows, in memory of Yeh Yung-chih, the "Rose Boy" bullied for being effeminate, who died in a school accident in 2000.

When a legislator opposed to same-sex marriage spoke, the crowd outside turned furious, shouting at them to "stop repeating yourself" and "step down."

As the vote came closer the crowd kept growing — from 20,000 at eight in the morning to more than 40,000 by eleven, just before the vote. By then Zhang Tianlan was soaked to the skin.

At last Su Jia-chyuan, president of the Legislative Yuan, put the Executive Yuan's bill to a one-minute vote. Zhang Tianlan stared at the live feed on the big screen. The result: 68 in favor, 27 against. The crowd erupted.

The bill then went to article-by-article review, debate and voting, and almost every article passed in its gay-friendly form. Zhang Tianlan let out a breath. After five hours in the rain, he decided to go home.

As the result came through, social media filled with rainbows again, as it had many times over the past two years. Groups opposed to same-sex marriage said they would boycott the law at next year's election.

The next day Zhang Tianlan went to the café near National Taiwan University that used to be Gin Gin's Bookstore. Ever since a high-school civics class taught him about the shop, he said, he had wanted to make the pilgrimage.

Gin Gin's, founded on January 1, 1999, was Taiwan's first gay bookstore. Taiwanese society was still conservative then. Legal same-sex marriage was unthinkable, even mentioning homosexuality was close to taboo, and newspapers and magazines often ran wrong-headed claims about gay people.

The pink sign at the door and the large six-color rainbow flag across the floor-to-ceiling windows jolted the conservative neighborhood around it. Yang Pingjing, the manager and spokesman, remembers that when the shop opened, "nine out of ten neighbors were against it," and people from a nearby church would drop pamphlets into its mailbox to "correct" gay culture.

"We used those big glass windows to get across the idea of gay people appearing and speaking up — let people see us, we are gay," Yang Pingjing said. The floor plan, he pointed out, was laid out as one square inside another, the shape of the Chinese character for "return," so that gay readers would feel they were coming home.

Gin Gin's opened on the rising tide of Taiwan's democracy and social movements in the 1990s, when gay organizations were forming one after another — among them the Taiwan Tongzhi Hotline Association, set up in 1998 to run a phone line where gay people could ask for advice and help with their problems.

Before legalization Gin Gin's had watched the movement turn many times, and conservative forces had never stopped pushing back. Now that the community had a provisional victory, Yang Pingjing preferred to look further ahead: "Real equality is still a long way off. A lot of details in the same-sex marriage law are unsettled — adoption above all, and surrogacy, having children with donor sperm, even cross-border same-sex marriage. We probably still have a fairly long road to walk."

A Wedding Banquet Called Same-Sex Marriage

By half past five, household registration offices around the island were closing. Gay people moved on to arts venues across the city for talks on gay themes.

That evening, a talk called "Portraits of the Gay Community of Our Time" was held at the Taiwan Contemporary Culture Lab, the former Air Force Command Headquarters.

Close to a hundred people came. One of the speakers, Taipei city councilor Miao Po-ya, who had also helped launch the marriage-equality referendum, took up "the legal obligations of marriage" with the audience. The gay community had never had the chance to think that question through, she said, and now had no choice.

The audience worried less about the obligations of marriage than about the law's uncertainty and the anti-gay forces still at work in society. Miao Po-ya's answer was that "marriage equality is not the finish line." The period in which the special law is in force is a good time to grow the soil for social equality; during it, the community has to work at talking to conservatives if it wants to win more rights.

Over the weekend that started on May 24, talks and events on gay life took place all over Taipei, covering everything from law to culture.

On Saturday night the Taiwan Alliance to Promote Civil Partnership Rights (the Alliance) went further and held the 2019 Ketagalan Boulevard Same-Sex Wedding Banquet in front of the Presidential Office Building — 160 tables, with 1,600 gay guests invited to the feast.

For three days running, all of Taiwan looked like it was holding a carnival called same-sex marriage.

Jennifer Lu, the coalition's chief coordinator, told reporters that many LGBT people who had no plans to marry still felt accepted.

Even as social media celebrated, many gay people came down from the excitement and began to think about something they had never had the chance to consider. Did they really need to rush into marriage and take on a string of legal obligations? What does marriage mean for two people?

For activists — Chi Chia-wei among them, and every couple who registered that day — this road of struggle is far from over. On the contrary, it is only the starting point.

Victoria Hsu, who founded the Alliance, said that once the referendum's two-year force expires, the community's next step is to keep pushing for same-sex marriage to be written into the Civil Code, and for more substantive rights, until society is genuinely equal.

Cover images from the Marriage Equality Coalition and Unsplash.