Taiwan: Thousands march for pride and gay marriage

BY NATASHA BARSOTTI — Taipei’s streets played host to thousands of people who turned out last weekend for Taiwan’s 10th annual gay pride celebration and demanded the legalization of same-sex marriage.

“Gay people are also tax-paying citizens, and we demand the same basic right as any heterosexual couple,” says Mu Chuan, one of the event’s organizers.

Advocacy groups have launched a campaign to collect one million signatures in support of legislation drafted on the issue to be sent to parliament next year, Radio Australia reports.

Two 30-year-old women from Taipei married Aug 11 in Taiwan’s first gay Buddhist wedding ceremony. Huang Meiyu and You Yating exchanged prayer beads in front of about 250 guests at the Hongshi Buddhist Seminary in the lush farmland outside Taipei. Guests included Buddhist classmates, journalists, monks, and gays and lesbians from across Taiwan.

Natasha Barsotti is originally from Trinidad and Tobago in the Caribbean. She had high aspirations of representing her country in Olympic Games sprint events, but after a while the firing of the starting gun proved too much for her nerves. So she went off to university instead. Her first professional love has always been journalism. After pursuing a Master of Journalism at UBC , she began freelancing at Xtra West — now Xtra Vancouver — in 2006, becoming a full-time reporter there in 2008.

Keep Reading

Trans issues didn’t doom the Democrats

OPINION: The Republicans won ending on a giant anti-trans note, but Democrats ultimately failed to communicate on class

Xtra Explains: Trans girls and sports

Debunking some of the biggest myths around trans girls and fairness in sports

How ‘mature minor’ laws let trans kids make their own decisions

Canadian law lets some youth make medical or legal decisions for themselves, but how does it work?

To combat transphobia, we need to engage with the people who spread it

OPINION: opening up a dialogue with those we disagree with is key if we want to achieve widespread social change