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TAIWANESE HUMAN RIGHTS ASSOCIATION OF CANADA CALLS ON TAIWANS LEGISLATURE TO PASS EQUAL MARRIAGE LAW
The Taiwanese Human Rights Association of Canada believes that the issue of equal marriage (same-sex marriage) is an important human rights issue in the world today. For this reason we declare our support for the Equal Marriage Act as proposed by legislators Teng Li-chun, You Mei-nu , Hsiao Mei-chin et al. This is a reasonable bill, removing gender reference from the relevant laws, thus permitting same-sex marriage without inserting other political agendas into the bill.
We call on the conveners of the Judiciary and Organic Laws and Statutes Committee, Liao Cheng-ching and Lu Hsueh-chang, to put this bill on the committee agenda as early as possible. We urge the Legislative Yuan to promptly pass this bill into law.
We believe that much of the opposition the idea of same sex marriage arises not so much from principled religious beliefs, as from deep prejudices against homosexuality, and a culturally-conditioned discomfort to applying the term marriage to any relationship other than that of one woman and one man. The importance of passing laws based on human rights is exactly to overcome such prejudices, and ensure equality under the law, especially for those who are subject to social stigma and discrimination.
International principles of human rights are said to be universal because, while allowing for varied expression in different cultures, they do not admit to exemptions because of claimed cultural difference, or, for example, constructs such as Asian values. Today almost 20 countries have legalized same sex marriage. The prejudices of a majority cannot be used to deny the human rights of a minority.
At the same time, we respect religious beliefs, and understand the fears of some, though we believe these are misguided. For this reason we suggest that a clause be added to the bill guaranteeing that no religious organization, or religious worker (priest, minister or monastic), shall be required to perform a marriage against the tenets of their religion.
President Michael Stainton and the Executive Board of THRAC