Asia's first marriage equality comes into force

On 24 May 2019, couples in Taiwan stood outside household registration offices to finally get married. It was the first day on which same-sex couples could marry on the island. Taiwan thus became the first country in Asia with marriage equality.

The road there had reached a turning point exactly two years earlier. On 24 May 2017, the Constitutional Court declared the marriage ban in the Civil Code unconstitutional because it violated the rights to equality and to marry. Now parliament had to act. A week before the deadline, legislators passed the law, and President Tsai Ing-wen signed it on 22 May. For activists, it was the culmination of a struggle they had been waging for around two decades.

On the morning the law came into force, the first marriage was registered in Tainan at 8 am. A few minutes later, the first couple in which one partner came from abroad followed in Hsinchu. In Taipei, one office was so crowded that couples could barely find room. They held bouquets, posed for photos and kissed. By the end of the day, according to the Interior Ministry, there were 526 couples, including considerably more female than male couples.

Not everyone wanted to give their name. Some asked to remain anonymous because the stigma towards gay men and lesbians was still noticeable. The writer Chen Hsue, who writes under a pseudonym, called legalisation only the first step. She hoped that queer people would in future be seen in society as perfectly ordinary people. On the Chinese mainland, marriage equality is not allowed, and queer relationships are regularly censored on television, as AP noted at the time.