The Struggle for Marriage Equality and the Need to Focus On Transgender Rights in Taiwan

Marriage equality has been the primary focus of LGBTQ rights activists in Taiwan for the past decade. After numerous setbacks, same-sex marriage was finally legalized in May 2019 by the Taiwanese Constitutional Court's decision finding that limiting marriage under the Civil Code as solely between a man and a woman was unconstitutional on grounds that it violated the principles of equality and the freedom of marriage. Moving forward, while ensuring marriage equality is enforced in practice, LGBTQ rights activists in Taiwan must strategize their next steps, including combating other types of discrimination based on gender and sexual orientation and advocating for transgender rights. As a first step, the energy from the marriage equality victory and the language used by the Justices of the Constitutional Court should be utilized to advocate for the elimination of the onerous regulations for legal gender change, which currently requires transgender persons to undergo surgery to remove their reproductive organs.

On a broader level, the advocacy for the LGBTQ community in Taiwan should not be limited to equality in the law but should also transform the meaning and practice of freedom and autonomy in the process. The Constitutional Court decision can serve as the catalyst for this struggle for selfdetermination.