KMT Chair Wu Den-yih Wisely Flop-flips on Gay Marriage

My students are awesome

You know you've been a political commentator in Taiwan too long when a Taiwanese gay couple you've long known have you over for drinks to ask you to explain the Court's ruling to them...

Wu Den-yih, the newly elected Chairman of the KMT, showed this week why he is widely regarded as pragmatic, flipping his position on gay marriage, and denying he ever held any other position...

Former vice president Wu Den-yih (吳敦義) yesterday denied having made a U-turn in his stance on legalizing homosexual marriage, saying that he has always supported it.

Wu, who was elected Chinese Nationalist Party (KMT) chairman on Saturday last week, in March told reporters that same-sex marriage “gives him the creeps.”

“The family values that have been passed on for hundreds of years risk being replaced by LGBT [lesbian, gay, bisexual and transgender] families and same-sex marriage. It is messed up,” Wu said at the time.

Wu on Tuesday posted a photograph of a rainbow on Facebook, with the caption: “May those who see this find happiness,” sparking controversy over his apparent U-turn on the issue.

This is the second signal Wu has sent that the party is moving towards the center. Recall that his affirmation of the 1992 Consensus was not only aimed at Beijing, but also at Party members who rejected former Chair Hung Hsiu-chu's bizarre formulation that sounded like she had adopted Beijing's position and wanted to hear reassuring centrism.

Polls show that there is support for gay marriage.

A poll by the Ministry of Justice released in 2015 showed 71 percent of Taiwanese supported marriage equality, while a survey conducted by Trend Survey and Research on behalf of the opposition Kuomintang found 51.7 percent of respondents supported legalizing same-sex marriage, while 43.3 percent disapproved.

Moreover, now that there has been a Constitutional Court ruling, most people are going to make their peace with it and move on, which will further increase social acceptance. By signaling that the fight on gay marriage is over, Wu is signaling to the party as well that there are more important things to fight for, like pensions, party assets, and patronage money.

Meanwhile the social authoritarians got a bone from the DPP and the legislature this week with a new tougher stance on drugs. The new laws place burdens on entertainment facilities to police themselves. I expect this is basically a trade for the loss on gay marriage: "Ok, so you guys can't control the minds and bodies of gay people, but at least you can enjoy hurting and punishing drug users." For those of us who lack the urgent need to control the minds and bodies of others, "social conservatism" simply looks like an excuse to find legal ways to hurt identifiable groups of fellow humans...
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