It’s a fact! Gay marriage is legal in Taiwan

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This Friday, the Taiwan parliament approved the marriage of same-sex couples. Here we give you all the details

After years of struggle by the LGBT community, yesterday the Taiwan Parliament approved the legalization of marriage between same-sex couples, which made it the first country in the continent to recognize the union between homosexual people, according to the Clarin portal. There were three different proposals that had to be debated among Taiwanese parliamentarians: the first two spoke of unions of same-sex couples; the third, presented by the Government, legalized gay marriage. The count was sixty-six votes in favor and twenty-seven against, so it was approved by a majority. The last proposal was the only one that offered rights for homosexual couples to adopt and the only one of the three presented that activists of the LGTB collective accepted.

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According to the CCN en Español portal, this vote takes place about two years after Taiwan's Constitutional Court decided that the law, which said marriage was between a man and a woman, was unconstitutional . This was how judges belonging to the panel gave Parliament two years to amend it and carry out the dissemination of new laws. This law, which has just been approved, allows same-sex couples to form exclusive permanent unions and, within those clauses, they are allowed to request government agencies to register their marriage, as the portal Clarin informs.

In what other countries is gay marriage legal?

According to a CNN en Español article, published in 2016, the Pew Research Center affirms that in the Latin American region there is a strong conservative tendency against equal marriage. In some countries of Central America such as Guatemala, El Salvador, Honduras and Nicaragua, the percentage of people who favor equal marriage does not exceed 16 percent. In other countries such as Venezuela, 28%, as in Colombia; in Peru 26%, in Bolivia 22%, Ecuador 16% and Paraguay 15%. It is clear that the trend is also negative. The Pew Research Center ensures that the countries of the same region with greater acceptance are Brazil, Chile, Mexico, Argentina and Uruguay. The latter is the most liberal country in the region and, with 62%, is the one that has more acceptance on the subject.

The first country to legalize equal marriage was the Netherlands in the year 2000, followed by Belgium in 2003 and Canada in 2005. In 2009, countries such as Norway, Sweden and Mexico legalized it, taking into account that in the latter it is allowed only in some states. Colombia and Finland approved it in 2016, but in the latter it was applied in 2017, the same year that Germany, Australia, Malta and Austria approved it.

LatinAmerican Post | Ana María Aray

Translated from "¡Es un hecho! El matrimonio gay es legal en Taiwan"