In a day full of upsets, perhaps the most unremarked upon event was the surprise triumph of the NPP in securing sixteen city council seats and the SDP in securing one city council seat. Two of these candidates, the NPP’s Lin Ying-meng and the SDP’s Miao Poya make history as Taiwan’s first openly lesbian city councilors...
What emerges from a televised debate held on November 15th between New Power Party (NPP) chair Huang Kuo-chang and Tseng Pin-chieh, a professor at the College of Law at National Chung Cheng University, should be highly concerning to supporters of marriage equality in Taiwan. Namely, Tseng’s comments in the debate are highly indicative of what the aims of anti-gay groups in Taiwan are in their referendum against marriage equality, what their current strategy is, and what their endgame likely is...
The Taiwan High Court ruling to uphold the acquittal of 22 Sunflower Movement activists for their actions during the 2014 occupation of the Legislative Yuan maintains a previous ruling approximately one year ago that found Sunflower Movement activists not guilty on the basis that their actions were justified civil disobedience. What is this indicative of, in reflecting on close to four years since the movement broke out and the year since the previous ruling?...
While LGBTQ organizations in Taiwan such as the Taiwan Tongzhi Hotline have publicly stated that the recall vote recently faced by NPP chair Huang Kuo-Chang should be a wake-up call for LGBTQ groups in Taiwan, as a reminder of the fact that they remain opposed by a number of socially conservative forces, this also raises a question worth considering. Was it, in fact, anti-gay marriage groups which were the primary force behind the recall vote against Huang? Ultimately, even if the recall vote did not succeed, what one finds in examining the social forces behind the recall vote is that the NPP may have been outgunned from the beginning by conservative social forces...
Huang Kuo-Chang has survived the recall vote organized against him by anti-gay marriage groups in his electoral district of New Taipei 12. Nevertheless, this was by the recall vote not meeting the necessary benchmark to pass, and the amount of voters who voted in favor of the recall were greater than those that voted against it. What now for the NPP, then?...
With NPP chair Huang Kuo-Chang facing a recall vote on December 16th, whether Huang can survive his recall vote regarding his support of gay marriage is, in some way, a sign of whether youth voters stand any chance of changing older, more traditionally conservative electoral districts such as Huang’s New Taipei 12th District...
With NPP chair Huang Kuo-Chang facing a recall vote in his electoral district of Xizhi organized by groups opposed to same-sex marriage set for December 16th, the NPP may face a challenge ahead...
New Power Party chairman and legislator Huang Kuo-chang has found himself the target of a recall initiative which began earlier this year as a response to his public support of same-sex marriage, an initiative which seems to have garnered enough support in Huang’s New Taipei City Xizhi district to potentially initiate a recall vote...