Marriage regardless of passport
Almost four years after marriage equality, Taiwan finally opened its registry offices to binational couples too.
On 19 January 2023, a hurdle fell in Taiwan that had kept many couples from marrying for years. The Ministry of the Interior instructed the authorities to register same-sex marriages with foreign partners from then on. Whether their home country recognised marriage equality no longer mattered.
Taiwan had introduced marriage equality in May 2019, the first country in Asia to do so. But the progress had a catch. Anyone who loved a person from Japan, Singapore or Malaysia was still not allowed to marry. The authorities relied on a law on private international law under which the law of the other country also had to permit the marriage. For binational couples, the new law therefore remained an empty promise.
The Taiwan Alliance to Promote Civil Partnership Rights therefore went to court with the couples affected. It won five cases, among them for couples with partners from Japan, Hong Kong, Macau and Singapore. But each ruling helped only the one couple that had sued.
The breakthrough finally came without a new law. The ministry simply changed its interpretation of the existing law, stating that previous practice contradicted the very law on which marriage equality was based. It was one of the last official acts of Premier Su Tseng-chang's government, which was about to resign.
The activists had still not reached their goal entirely. Couples in which one person came from the People's Republic of China remained excluded. Under Taiwanese law, people from the mainland are not considered foreigners; separate rules apply to them. Only in September 2024 did this door open too: since then, such couples can register a marriage concluded in a third country.
The January decision shows how much work remains after a historic law. Equality is not created in parliament alone, but often only in the offices and courtrooms that follow.