With Taiwan hosting its largest ever gay Pride celebration that saw, according to 365gay.com, 10,000 people take to the streets of Taipei, the country’s LGBTQ movement appears to be gaining momentum. Here Josephine Ho, a professor and coordinator for the Study of Sexualities at the National Central University in Taiwan, reports on her experiences in, and impressions of, the country’s GLBT movement.
Since the lifting of martial law in 1987, Taiwan has prided itself upon steady progress toward liberal democracy with an ever-broadening understanding of human rights that now allegedly includes the rights of gays and lesbians. Continuous struggles by gay rights groups since the early 1990s and tides of international politics have made it imperative for aspiring nations to at least nominally uphold the concept of human rights, most fashionably and conveniently gay rights. Since 2000, Taipei city has provided limited funding to host the Gay Festival, made up of forums, bazaars, film-showing, and special publications to educate the residents of the city. In 2003, the world was taken by surprise when President Chen Shui-bian announced that newly drafted Human Rights Basic Law would take a positive position on the issue of gay marriages and gays adopting children. Yet as world media gleefully reported on the upcoming monumental ‘legalization of gay marriage’ in Taiwan, local lesbian and gay groups were left scrambling to debunk the publicity stunt. In actuality, gay proposals for legal reform were shot down as soon as they were proposed. Furthermore, ruling party legislators and even the vice president have made blatantly discriminating remarks against gays for ‘causing the nation to perish’ and calling people living with HIV ‘the abomination of god.’ Such remarks fly directly in the face of the seeming tolerance of the ruling party.
Constantly struggling against such an inhospitable atmosphere, LGBTQ groups have mobilized and organized gay pride marches in Taipei since 2003, with various politicians cautiously and awkwardly delivering congratulatory remarks at the festivities. The realities of gay existence, however, are far from amiable. Lesbians and gays continue to face prejudice, hostility, and indifference, not to mention lack of recognition in their civil rights. In Taipei, malicious police raids were conducted on gay cruising grounds in 1997, on gay saunas in 1998, on lesbian pubs in 2002, and on gay home parties in 2004. Such harassment has resulted in public exposure of gay individuals and violation of their basic human rights, not to mention stigmatizing gay lifestyles and gay-oriented businesses. Compulsory blood- and urine-testing at gay parties as well as police collaboration with the tabloid media further testify to the treacherous urban space of Taipei city for sexual minorities. People living with HIV and their half-houses are driven out of communities. The seizure and confiscation of gay pictorial publications from the only gay bookstore in Taiwan and the consequent indictment and sentencing of its owner in 2003 despite persistent gay mobilization and protest signal growing rigidification. These blatantly discriminatory measures fly directly in the face of city government’s claim that it respects diversity.
What was truly devastating for sexual minorities is that a legal apparatus of censorship has been brought into place to purify social space in the name of child protection. A new rating system was introduced in 2004. Overnight, the publications that had given young gays and lesbians the first embodiment and representation of their desires and identities are now off limits, wrapped in plastic and kept in specially designated adult sections. Later in 2005, a comparable ‘self-imposed labeling’ rating system was created for all online content. Webmasters are erecting unusually strict self-censorship regulations against any sexually explicit or mildly offensive messages as well as any seductive or licentious images in personal online albums so as to avoid possible litigation. The freedom and ease that came with anonymity on the internet and had afforded many gays and lesbians their first taste of friendship, camaraderie, and even sexual negotiation are now severely curtailed as ISP providers submit, upon police request, personal registration data of net users so as to avoid litigation. The new legislation may not have targeted gays and lesbians in particular, yet as they aim to criminalize all sexual communication and sexual information, gays and lesbians are easy targets. Police entrapment of internet users have become so blatant and widespread that this year’s gay pride march chose this issue as their main focus of protest.
Gay and lesbian groups as well as other sexual minorities in Taiwan have gradually awakened to the bitter reality that their limited gains in visibility and equity prove to be quite fragile against the social rigidification embodied in the enforcement of child protection-oriented legislation and regulation. In reaction against the cost of devastated lives and growing fear of possible litigation, sexual minorities are embarking upon the torturously long and difficult task of legal reform to challenge the stranglehold of these laws. For what is the benefit of affirming the legitimacy of gay identity, if at the same time the daily activities and communications that make up that identity are swept into illegality?
