TAIPEI (Taiwan News) — Taiwan’s Legislative Yuan Procedure Committee announced Tuesday that the Executive Yuan’s same-sex union proposal (The Enforcement Act of Judicial Yuan Interpretation No. 748) will enter the Legislative Yuan’s agenda on March 5.
Democratic Progressive Party legislator Cheng Yun-peng (鄭運鵬) said the DPP backs the bill to go through a second reading, while Kuomintang representative Johnny Chiang (江啟臣) said the party will undertake discussions before deciding whether it supports this motion.
New Power Party founding leader Freddy Lim (林昶佐) also put forward a draft bill for safeguarding same-sex marriage rights, which passed the threshold for legislative deliberation on Feb. 23. Lim said Tuesday that the proposal is only a draft as it must await further discussion and approval by pro-marriage groups, who wish to wait for the outcome of next month’s deliberations.
The Executive Yuan released a monumental draft bill which will act as the legal basis for same-sex marriages in Taiwan on Feb. 20. The bill came two months prior to the final date (May 24) by which the country’s Constitutional Court ruled same-sex unions must be legally implemented.
The bill contains a total of 27 articles on same-sex unions designed to protect the rights of same-sex couples to pursue a common life and permanent, intimate relationship, as by which opposite-sex couples are guaranteed in Taiwan’s Civil Code.