Friday, December 16, 2016

Taiwan News #4: The Gay Marriage Trap for the Tsai Administration

My latest on gay marriage and the Tsai Admininstration for Taiwan News....
On the other hand Tsai, as both President and Chairman of the DPP, should have sent down orders to the legislature to get this done weeks ago, with the threat of punishment if legislators do not fall into line. That is, after all, what they were elected for. Someone in Tsai's office needs to start taking heads. It is nearly 2017, and there is a real danger that the public takeaway from the first year of the Tsai Administration going into the 2018 local elections is going to be… gay marriage, not something on living standards or the economy. The DPP does not need voters to be asking themselves why they keep hearing about gay marriage when their salaries have regressed to 1998 levels.
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3 comments:

an angry taiwanese said...

Tsai is not interested in your or my problems. Traditional Green supporters like me should make oueselves her problems, instead of expecting her to suddenly turn into a good president.

Bryce said...

Dear Mr. Turton,

I appreciate your thoughtful analysis on Taiwanese politics in general, but I must quite strongly disagree with you on this particular point.

Though I understand the sentiment that the labor rights movement is not receiving the attention which it deserves, I find your juxtaposition of that with the queer rights movement in a way to raise the profile of one by degrading the other to be demeaning and patronizing.

Your implication is that the fight for queer liberation is already over. In addition to to being baffled by this due to the fact that a second glance at the state of queer liberation in the world, and in Taiwan, reveals that this is clearly untrue, your depiction of the pride parades, themselves having fallen under heavy criticism, as "a bit of fun" strikes as more than a bit insulting.

No where in the world are queer people fully liberated, their histories and identities not in constant danger of being erased. The narrative that this is a not as worthy a cause to be spending so much energy on and that we should just settle for civil unions so the government can focus on "more important issues" is partly the reason why the large push for queer rights that occurred only a couple of years ago is not being faced with regressive assault on all fronts internationally.

I can only assume that you had the best intentions in writing this, but as a queer man living in Taiwan, it was deeply upsetting to read your assessment that queerness and queer issues are somehow more cavalier compared to more serious issues and was far removed from the experiences of myself and other queer people I know. I invite you to please take the time to educate yourself more thoroughly on queer liberation and history before commenting on this in the future.

Michael Turton said...

I invite you to please take the time to educate yourself more thoroughly on queer liberation and history before commenting on this in the future.

I invite you to learn to read English. None of your claims are written or intended in that piece. You're just reading into your own problems and issues.