A Political Process Analysis

Since Charles Tilly's ground-breaking work, social movements have been understood as a collective challenge to advance a claim whose realization conflicts with those who control the government or those whose interests and cultural values are dominant.Footnote ³ Movement success comes as a concession from the incumbents due to the superior strength of the challengers over their opponents. As such, a number of political conditions shape movement dynamics by raising or lowering the cost of protest activities. This perspective evolved into a “political process” approach,Footnote ⁴ and the investigations of favourable political conditions crystallized into “political opportunity structure” (POS).Footnote ⁵

However, this stream of investigation has incited a lively debate. Critics pointed out POS entailed a deterministic bias to the extent that subjective agency was neglected. An unperceived and unused opportunity could not facilitate protest mobilization.Footnote ⁶ Some uncritical uses of POS easily resulted in either a tautological claim that movement succeeded because of supporting conditions, or a simplified view of “opportunistic” protesters who only waited for the favourable political wind.Footnote ⁷ Also problematic was the use of POS purely as a prediction variable on movement outcome because it did not consider that movement mobilization brought about mediation with the pre-existing political conditions.Footnote ⁸ In response, POS scholars have retreated from structuralist generalizations in their earlier works, and paid more attention to the intermediate causal chains.Footnote ⁹ Newer studies attempted to bring out clearer specification on how political conditions facilitated or impeded movement courses.Footnote ¹⁰

This article follows the revisionist trend to focus on the interactions between the authorities and Taiwan's marriage equality movement. To avoid the deterministic and tautological connotations, I will use “political process” and “political conditions” instead of POS. There are two reasons for my theoretical choice. First, I want to retain these two terms to highlight the fact same-sex marriage is essentially a state-centred politics, involving a legal redefinition of matrimony as an institution. Other proposed conceptual alternatives, such as “relational field,”Footnote ¹¹ “political context”Footnote ¹² and “political reform model”Footnote ¹³ appear too fluid to place enough emphasis on the state. By contrast, the theoretical insights from political process provide a heuristic framework to analyse such state-centred contentions.

Second, there have been studies that applied this conceptual tool to understand the global politics of same-sex marriage. Soule (Reference Soule2004) examined 37 state-level same-sex marriage bans in the US, with the finding that the presence of local conservative organizations was a key factor.Footnote ¹⁴ Smith (Reference Smith2005) offered a North American comparison, demonstrating that Canada's more centralized political regime resulted in a weaker opposition to same-sex marriage than its southern neighbour.Footnote ¹⁵ Bernstein and Naples (Reference Bernstein and Naples2015) found American and Canadian campaigners for marriage equality adopted a litigation approach, whereas Australian counterparts chose a legislative route because of absence of a bill of rights.Footnote ¹⁶ This article follows this stream of literature to extend the political process approach to Taiwan.

Taiwan's Breakthrough in Global Perspective

While same-sex intimacy might be coeval with homo sapiens, the granting of the right to form a same-sex family is truly a twenty-first century invention. Ever since the first breakthrough in the Netherlands in 2001,Footnote ¹⁷ there have been 26 regions/countries (two sub-national regions being Scotland and Greenland) that have conferred marriage rights to lesbians and gays on a territory-wide basis as of March 2018.Footnote ¹⁸ With its 2017 court ruling, Taiwan is poised to become the first Asian country to follow this path.

Taiwan deserves attention for several reasons. Together with Argentina (2010)Footnote ¹⁹ and South Africa (2006),Footnote ²⁰ Taiwan moved to full marriage equality without experiencing an intermediate stage of partial enfranchisement. Most countries that recognized same-sex marriage first tried to include lesbian and gay couples in civil unions or domestic partnerships, constituting a watered-down version of heterosexual marriage because of the weaker protection of rights and benefits under such arrangements. Before Denmark pioneered civil union in 1989, there were countries that granted certain rights to cohabitating couples. Whether the invention of civil union represented a progressive inclusion of sexual minority remained debated. Within the LGBT community, there remained “marriage dissidents” who opposed the extension of heterosexual norm for its assimilationist implications.Footnote ²¹ Arguably, a civil union designed exclusively for same-sex couples would have represented a solution to broaden the legal protection without erasing their separate identities. Aside from the ideological consideration, LGBT activists sometimes embraced civil union rather than marriage because of tactical consideration. Prior to the Argentinean legalization of same-sex marriage in 2010, the country's lesbian and gay activists actually split into a pragmatic demand for civil union and a radical campaign for marriage right.Footnote ²² On the other hand, there existed principled opposition to civil unions and other legal arrangements because they often emerged as a conservative attempt to “slow or even stop the political progress that same-sex couples make in moving toward marriage.”Footnote ²³ The same went for Taiwanese campaigners; by the time the legislature was about to debate on same-sex marriage in 2016, they declared anything less than full marriage rights constituted a discrimination.Footnote ²⁴

Taiwan's path toward marriage equality took a “big bang” pattern in that there were available no civil union or other legal forms before the Constitutional Court struck down the existing bans in 2017. In Taiwan, the campaign to institute same-sex partnership never gained traction. After lawmakers began to sponsor reform proposals on marriage in 2006, the partnership proposal did not emerge on the legislative agenda. Taiwan's legal system did not confer legal rights on cohabiting partners with the minor exception that they were protected under the domestic violence prevention scheme. Some local governments began to open household registration to same-sex couples, which came with certain entitlements, including hospital visitation rights. Household registration amounted to something much weaker than civil union, and neither was it universally valid across different cities and counties. Therefore, Taiwan's lesbian and gay movement was able to realize marriage equality all in one step, without undergoing the protracted gradualism that involved partial concessions.

Finally, Taiwan's lesbian and gay activism was a latecomer with moderate strategy by international standards. It was only in the 1990s that lesbians and gays began to set up their own campus clubs, bookstores, churches and support groups, thereby kickstarting the domestic same-sex movement.Footnote ²⁵ The late start affected the tenor of Taiwan's lesbian and gay activism. The confrontational tactics of the gay liberation movement in other countries of the early 1970sFootnote ²⁶ and the angry protests over the AIDS epidemics in the 1980sFootnote ²⁷ were conspicuously absent. What has been described as “liberal lesbian and gay politics,”Footnote ²⁸ with an emphasis on identity and inclusion, has been the mainstream strategy. Protests mostly aimed at challenging discrimination and stigmatization, rather than advancing political and policy demands in the early period. Elsewhere in the world, the idea of gay marriage was essentially contentious among the LGBT community because of its seeming conformity with the heterosexual norm.Footnote ²⁹ Another reason why early activists did not pursue marriage equality was that such a demand was seen as unrealistic.Footnote ³⁰ Among Taiwan's LGBT community, there existed a radical tendency toward “destroying family and abolishing matrimony” (huijia feihun 毀家廢婚) that opposed the extension of marriage to lesbians and gays on ideological grounds. Such adherents represented a marginal voice, and most pro-marriage activists were cautious so as not to uncritically idolize marriage.Footnote ³¹ In this manner, the internal dissension within Taiwan's LGBT community had been minimized.

With the noticeable exception of Dayway Chief's personalized protest mentioned above, Taiwan's lesbian and gay activists adopted the idea of same-sex marriage rather late. In 2006, Hsiao Bi-khim 蕭美琴, a DPP lawmaker, led the effort to legalize marriage and child adoption for same-sex couples. In that year, Taiwan LGBT Pride, the annual gay parade in Taipei, highlighted the marriage issue by staging wedding ceremonies for lesbian couples. Although the proposal obtained enough lawmaker endorsement, it failed to make it onto the legislative agenda. For lesbian and gay activists, the defeat demonstrated it was still too early to advocate for same-sex marriage.Footnote ³² The establishment in 2009 of the Taiwan Alliance to Promote Civil Partnership Rights (TAPCPR) (Taiwan banlu quanyi tuidong lianmeng 台灣伴侶權益推動聯盟), the first advocacy organization for marriage equality, represented a new beginning for the campaign. The TAPCPR advocated multiple strategies to liberalize the existing regulations in order to promote same-sex marriage, civil partnerships and multiple-person families. In 2013, one of its demands, the equal right to marriage for same-sex couples, gained enough endorsement from lawmakers and became ready for its first reading in the legislature.

We could take the first revision proposal in 2006 as the starting point for marriage equality movement; from there, it took 11 years to activate the intervention of the judiciary to remove the legal barriers to same-sex marriage. To take the experience of the US as a reference, the first time lesbian and gay activists put marriage on their agenda was in 1987.Footnote ³³ The American movement took eight years to elicit a positive response from the local judiciary (Hawai‘i's Baehr v. Lewin decision in 1993), and 28 years for the federal Supreme Court to rule in favour of same-sex marriage in the landmark Obergefell v. Hodges case in 2015. Certainly, latecomers enjoyed a number of advantages including the hindsight wisdom and the ability to ride on the global wave of success. Moreover, the countries that legalized same-sex marriage were mostly located in the advanced West, and their stable democracy and economic affluence that Taiwanese sought after, bestowed a positive value on marriage equality. Still, Taiwan's progress was comparatively faster. At the time the Dutch government recognized same-sex marriage in 2001, Taiwan's first lesbian and gay organization was finally officially registered in the same year, and the annual Gay Pride parade (starting in 2003) had not yet even taken place.Footnote ³⁴

Assessing Existing Explanations

The existing literatures offer several approaches to understanding the success in marriage equality. First, culture matters because the acceptability of intimacy among people of the same sex is fundamentally a moral judgment, which is usually guided by inherited cultural norms. A nation is more likely to grant civil rights to same-sex couples if its cultural resources encourage diversity and tolerance. In the wake of Taiwan's progressive court decision, international media commentaries highlighted the country's plural heritages. A Washington Post journalist emphasized the “cultural mix,” including “indigenous groups, Dutch and Japanese colonizers, and folk practices carried across the Taiwan Strait from mainland China.”Footnote ³⁵ Similarly, an Economist writer maintained that outside influences and indigenous traditions helped “to create a uniquely open, hybrid society.”Footnote ³⁶

This culturalist explanation is problematic for several reasons. There is no evidence that external cultural influences, be it colonialism or Chinese culture, promotes respect for different sexual orientations. The emphasis on Taiwan's indigenous people (2.4 per cent of the population) is also questionable. Indigenous people have the highest percentage of Christians among Taiwan's ethnic groups. Although Christians are a religious minority – 6.0 per cent in a 2015 surveyFootnote ³⁷ – they make up the main constituency in the campaign to oppose same-sex marriage. A number of indigenous Christians played a leading role in the anti-gay movement.Footnote ³⁸ Lastly, Confucianism, as a set of cultural values that places a premium on respect for authority, group harmony and familial piety, has been prevalent in a number of East Asian countries including Taiwan. A study has found the Confucian familial orientation discourages the acceptance of homosexuality.Footnote ³⁹ Comparative studies on Chinese societies with the same Confucian roots suggests a more nuanced understanding on cultural influence. Hong Kong was a pioneer in LGBT activism in creating the indigenous term “tongzhi 同志” (comrades), now a widely-adopted identity among sinophone lesbians and gays. Nonetheless, by the end of 1990s, Taiwan has engendered the most proactive movement, eclipsing that in Hong Kong.Footnote ⁴⁰ That sexual minority in China and Singapore faced a repressive environment of intolerance while their Taiwanese counterparts emerged as a vocal interest group suggests the limited use of a culturalist explanation.Footnote ⁴¹

There is another stream of research that examines how the international liberal trend prods different countries toward more acceptance of sexual diversity. Growing global integration has led to the repeal of sodomy laws in many countries.Footnote ⁴² Same-sex union itself was a globalized idea transmitted across the transnational network.Footnote ⁴³ In the European context, the supranational governing structure exerted an isomorphic effect that nudged reluctant member states to enfranchise lesbians and gays.Footnote ⁴⁴ The gist is that a country will be more likely to grant full citizenship to the sexual minority if it is more integrated into world society.

Taiwan's case does not fully sustain the claim of beneficial impacts from the international linkage. The country's diplomatic isolation has hindered the influence of international organizations, such as the UN. It was only in 2009 that Taiwan began to integrate the UN's human rights covenants into domestic laws. The flip side of the lack of international recognition was that governmental leaders were compelled to launch a “human rights diplomacy” to highlight the country's credential of being a respectful member of liberal democracies internationally. Both Chen Shui-bian and Ma Ying-jeou have funded international events for LGBT rights or received their representatives, although Taiwan's activists persistently pointed out their gaps between rhetoric and practice.Footnote ⁴⁵

On the civil society level, the global liaisons certainly helped Taiwan's lesbian and gay activists gain new information and adopt updated tactics. This beneficial effect, however, was offset by the fact that conservative opposition also grew stronger due to its international linkages. Church leaders had embraced an anti-gay-rights agenda by taking lessons from conservative Christians in Hong Kong.Footnote ⁴⁶ Some resourceful US right-wing groups have provided tactical support for the domestic opposition against same-sex marriage.Footnote ⁴⁷ The external influences coming to Taiwan were heterogeneous and conflicting at best, rather than one-sidedly empowering LGBT activism. In fact, there are times when international support turns out to enfeeble the local movement. That the contemporary Chinese LGBT activism is largely restricted to officially sanctioned HIV/AIDS prevention in spite of the generous donation from abroad indicates a more nuanced understanding of the international linkage.Footnote ⁴⁸

Finally, some researchers have looked at the shift of public opinion. As people became less willing to voice negative attitudes, lesbians and gays gained more social acceptability.Footnote ⁴⁹ Even the conservative opposition had to reframe their rhetoric by not attacking gays, but instead focusing on family and children protection.Footnote ⁵⁰ Data from the Taiwan Social Change Survey indicate a secular growth in tolerance. On the question whether “same-sex loving people should have the right to marriage,” respondents who expressed “strong agreement” and “agreement” made up 11.4 per cent in 1991, 52.5 per cent in 2012, and 54.2 per cent in 2015.Footnote ⁵¹ Taiwan's marriage equality activists often cited this survey finding to justify their widespread support.

The public opinion explanation is insufficient on several accounts. Favourable public attitude did not lead to movement gains or legal reforms. In fact, from 1995 to 2012, the World Values Survey indicated Japanese were more tolerant than Taiwanese.Footnote ⁵² Yet, Japan lagged behind in the pursuit of marriage equality. Respondent attitude data obtained in an artificial interview milieu does not necessarily reflect the actual preference for the policy. Once a dispute emerged, their attitude was liable to undergo changes induced by the rivalry of contending forces. As Taiwan's pro-gay lawmakers launched the third attempt to legalize same-sex marriage in 2016, opponents also geared up their protest mobilization. Two surveys carried out by different institutions showed a swift decline in pro-marriage equality opinion. On 28 November, the Taiwanese Public Opinion Foundation released a neck-and-neck result showing 46.3 per cent for same-sex marriage and 45.4 per cent against.Footnote ⁵³ This survey has been intensely criticized for its overtly misleading wording and the subsequent interpretation. The shrinking of supportive public opinion was corroborated by two unannounced polls done by Taiwan ThinkTank. On 4 November, results showed 54.6 per cent of respondents were strongly supportive or supportive of equal rights, but the figure dropped to 34.8 per cent on 12 December.Footnote ⁵⁴ Consequently, supportive public opinion was hardly a solid bedrock underpinning progressive reforms; in reality, it fluctuated as the debate heated up.

Cultural endowments, international linkages, and public opinions provide partial or inadequate solution to the puzzle of Taiwan's breakthrough. One of the common shortcomings is the lack of attention to the contentious dynamics between LGBT activists and their conservative opponents. What follows is an analysis of the political conditions that made marriage equality possible.

The Conservative Countermovement

Prior to the appearance of the marriage equality issue, a religion-based conservative movement had emerged. In 2003, religious leaders launched a campaign to restrict women's access to abortion. In 2006, the conflict between conservatives and feminists flared up over revisions to the abortion law, and the result was a stalemate, as neither side was able to realize its desired changes to the existing regulations.Footnote ⁵⁵ The same year also witnessed the first attempt to legalize same-sex marriage, and as such, conservative leaders swiftly redirected their attention to gay rights, which appeared as a more alarming threat. Catholic and Protestant leaders formed a coalition in 2007 to defend marriage as a heterosexual union, a move that actually predated the formation of TAPCPR, the first pro-same-sex marriage organization in Taiwan in 2009.

In the US, the escalating mobilization of the religious right to defend the norm of heterosexual monogamy stimulated a growing emphasis on marriage on the part of lesbian and gay activists.Footnote ⁵⁶ A similar movement-countermovement interplay was also discernible in Taiwan. By the time the second reform bill was proposed in 2013, a strong and well-prepared conservative coalition was already there. In September of that year, an Alliance of Taiwanese Religious Groups for Caring Family (Taiwan zongjiao tuanti aihu jiating dalianmeng 台灣宗教團體愛護家庭大聯盟) was formed, and Buddhist and Unification Church leaders joined hands with Protestant and Catholic ones for the first time. On 30 November, a large-scale rally with the participation of 300,000 people took place to defend the traditional marriage. Although the estimate of participant number was subject to debate, a pro same-sex marriage activist acknowledged the event played a key role in stopping the reform bill because “so many people took to the streets, easily surpassing the number of gay parade participants.”Footnote ⁵⁷

Anticipating that the ruling Kuomintang (KMT) might lose the general election in 2016, conservatives launched a new party, Faith and Hope League (FHL) (xinxin xiwang lianmeng 信心希望聯盟). The FHL launched a signature-collecting campaign for a referendum that would put future changes to marriage to a popular vote. In the end, FHL received 1.70 per cent of proportionate representation and failed to obtain a legislative seat. Although it had collected more than 150,000 signatures, the referendum application was turned down by a government committee.

As the third reform attempt was launched in November 2016, an emergency mobilization by opponents effectively delayed its progress. Religious conservatives staged a mass rally on 3 December 2016, attracting 200,000 participants, according to their estimate, and launched local protests and campaigns to recall pro-gay lawmakers. The concerted effort appeared successful in tilting the hitherto supportive attitude toward same-sex marriage in public opinion, as mentioned above. Some previously supportive legislators began to dodge the issue so as not to incur voter antagonism.Footnote ⁵⁸ Within the ruling DPP, a compromise suggestion to legislate a special law for same-sex couples instead of revising the Civil Code began to circulate. The proposal aimed to deflect pressure on DPP lawmakers at the cost of infuriating lesbian and gay activists who thought the ruling party had stepped back from its campaign promise. On 26 December, the reform proposals finished their first reading and were ready to be processed in the next legislative session. When the Constitutional Court announced its decision to review the dispute in February 2017, the case was taken out of the legislative arena and fell under the jurisdiction of judges.

The existing study suggests countermovements are most likely to emerge when their rivals have “achieved some success.”Footnote ⁵⁹ However, in Taiwan's case, opponents to same-sex marriage actually predated the lesbian and gay campaign. The advantage in head start was helpful to mobilizing those conservative constituencies who were previously uninvolved in political issues, which explained their success in frustrating the second reform proposal in 2013 and producing a divide among DPP lawmakers in 2016. Facing a more resourceful and organized countermovement, Taiwan's marriage equality campaigners were facilitated by the following changes in the political process.

The New Electoral System

Taiwan adopted a new electoral system starting with the legislative election in 2008. The new rule reduced the number of lawmakers by half, replaced multiple-member districts with single-member districts, and introduced a second vote for political party for proportionate representative (PR) seats. The reform was a bipartisan response to voter dissatisfaction with the legislature, albeit both KMT and DPP had their own political calculations, yet it generated an unanticipated beneficial result for social movements including lesbian and gay activism.

While the overall number of lawmakers was slashed by half, the reduction of PR seats was minor. Previously, PR seats had constituted 41 out of 225 seats (18.2 per cent); afterwards, the figure became 34 of 113 (30.0 per cent). The relative growth in the PR percentage had a profound impact on the legislative campaign by LGBT activists. Since PR lawmakers were nominated by parties, they were more insulated from constituencies than district lawmakers and thus were more likely to propose or co-sign an “unpopular” reform bill to benefit the sexual minority.Footnote ⁶⁰ This is not to say that Taiwanese voters opposed the opening of the marriage gates to lesbians and gays overwhelmingly. However, when a small core of determined conservative voters were persistent, only a few district lawmakers were willing to risk their political future by standing firm on marriage equality.Footnote ⁶¹ District legislators were more likely to cite the excuse of public opinion in their opposition to marriage equality. Liao Cheng-ching 廖正井, a KMT member for the 7th and 8th Legislature (2008–16), suffices as an illustration here. He was instrumental in frustrating the second legislative attempt in 2013 because of his role as a committee convener. Pressed by LGBT activists, Liao replied, “My folks ask me to stand out because they thought homosexuality goes against human nature (tongxinglian weifan renxing 同性戀違反人性).” Liao's frank expression probably cost him his re-election chance in 2016, because marriage equality campaigners, together with newly emergent activists after the Sunflower Movement (see below), launched a vigorous blacklisting campaign against him. His candid remark actually resonated with many district lawmakers, regardless of their party affiliations, because they had to take care of the voice of district voters.

The existence of PR seats encouraged major parties to field people with professional expertise but who lack political skill to canvas for votes. It became a limited but important avenue by which people who were not professional politicians, such as scholars and movement leaders, could become legislators. For instance, Yu Mei-nu 尤美女, a DPP PR lawmaker in the 8th and 9th Legislature, was a feminist lawyer before her political career. She played a key role in proposing marriage equality bills in 2013 and 2016 (see #2, 3, and 6 in Table 1). Similarly, Hsu Yu-jen 許毓仁, a KMT PR lawmaker in the 9th Legislature, was originally a social entrepreneur. Hsu represented the lone KMT voice campaigning for marriage equality and he was responsible for two reform bills (see #7 and 8 in Table 1).

Table 1 lists all the nine revision bills for marriage equality introduced to the legislature from 2005 to 2016. Among the 37 proposing (tian 提案) lawmakers, 21 were from PR. Clearly, PR lawmakers were at the forefront of marriage equality.

Table 1:

The Marriage Equality Proposals in Legislature (2005–16)

Source:

Taiwan's Legislative Yuan website, http://lis.ly.gov.tw/lylgmeetc/lgmeetkm_lgmem. Accessed 1 May 2017.

Notes:

Pan-green parties include the DPP, the Taiwan Solidarity Union, and the New Power Party, while Pan-blue parties are the KMT and the People First Party.

In addition, the 2008 electoral reform lent support to Taiwan's LGBT activism because of the introduction of a second vote. Previously PR seats were distributed according to the aggregate of each party's district candidate votes, which effectively deprived the chance of small parties to compete in this arena because they had difficulties fielding candidates in nationwide districts. After the reform, parties that nominated minimally ten district candidates were entitled to compete for PR seats. Taiwan's Green Party (TGP), the most persistently pro-LGBT political force,Footnote ⁶² suffices as an illustration. The TGP was established in 1996 but underwent a decline in the early 2000s. Its prolonged inaction ended as the new electoral system opened up new prospects. In the subsequent three elections, the TGP nominated openly gay candidates to compete for lawmaker seats; however, none ended up being elected.

The importance of publicly gay candidates cannot be underestimated because there have not been any elected politicians who were willing to declare a differing sexual orientation. Gay candidates offered a major psychological boost because of their willingness to confront the existing discrimination.Footnote ⁶³ Both Ma Ying-jeou (a married man with two daughters) and Tsai Ing-wen (a single woman) have been publicly questioned about their rumoured sexual orientation; while the former came forward with a denial, the latter chose not to respond to such an inquiry. In view of this, the resuscitation of TGP's electoral campaigning helped to elevate political visibility of lesbians and gays.

The Sunflower Effect

The Sunflower Movement of 2014 originated from a dispute over a free-trade agreement with China, and evolved into a student-led occupation of the legislature for 24 days. Although the protesters adopted a highly disruptive tactic to suspend the normal working of a state organ, they enjoyed persistently high public support probably because of widespread concerns over economic integration with China as well as the careful civility and politeness of the protest participants. The Sunflower Movement was perceived to be a success because it prevented the immediate ratification of the controversial free-trade bill. Inspired by the massive outpouring of youthful idealism, newer waves of protest activism by the younger generation surged. For marriage equality campaigners, the eruption of the Sunflower Movement was crucial for the following reasons.

The Sunflower Movement was primarily a young people's protest, as an on-site survey indicated participants under the age of 30 made up 74.1 per cent.Footnote ⁶⁴ And similar to research findings elsewhere in the world, young citizens were more likely to accept different sexual orientations. The above-mentioned poll by Taiwan ThinkTank in November 2016 revealed that 78.9 per cent of respondents under 30 supported marriage equality, and the percentage decreased with older age groups, down to 17.6 per cent for respondents over 70. Younger Taiwanese becoming more politically active lent support to the campaign for marriage equality. Before the Sunflower Movement, only conservatives were able to stage mass rallies due to their church base, while LGBT campaigners tended to hold smaller-scale events. Afterwards, marriage equality activists were able to ride on the wave of youthful enthusiasm, holding mass rallies on 5 October 2014 and 10 December 2016.

Some tactics pioneered in the Sunflower Movement reappeared as the dispute over marriage equality intensified at the end of 2016. When the legislature was still occupied, some activists attempted to spread the movement message to different places by staging street speeches and music performances, and by distributing leaflets. At its height, the so-called Beez (xiaomifeng 小蜜蜂) had more than a hundred cells (which they called “beehives”) all over Taiwan. The so-called Marriage Equality Beez (hunyin pingquan xiaomifeng 婚姻平權小蜜蜂) relied on similarly decentralized, creative and spontaneous volunteering among the young participants, which once amounted to 20,000 people, according to its initiator.Footnote ⁶⁵ One might argue that Taiwan's Sunflower generation effortlessly metamorphosized into a rainbow generation.

The Sunflower Movement generated a youthful cohort who decided to embrace political careers. There were Sunflower activists who took part in the 2014 local election and the 2016 legislative election, and some of them were openly gay.Footnote ⁶⁶ Two newly formed political parties which claimed to carry on its legacy, the New Power Party (NPP) (shidai liliang 時代力量) and the Social Democratic Party (SDP) (shehui minzhu dang 社會民主黨), emerged as important allies to Taiwan's LGBT movement. The NPP won five seats and became the third-largest party in the legislature. NPP lawmakers were the first to initiate marriage reform proposals in the 9th Legislature (see # 4 and 5 in Table 1), and its chair Huang Kuo-chang 黃國昌 was targeted for a recall campaign mounted by conservatives for his support for marriage equality. Although the SDP failed in its first election, two of its lesbian candidates, Jennifer Lu 呂欣潔 and Miao Po-ya 苗博雅, gained attention and became the leading faces for marriage equality movement.

In addition, there was another group of Sunflower participants who joined the DPP, and after the turnover of power, obtained various level positions in the government. These young political workers became one of the most steadily pro-LGBT voices within the ruling party. In short, the Sunflower Movement catalysed Taiwan's younger generation into activism, which helped to reenergize the campaign for marriage equality.

The DPP's Political Ascendancy

The 2016 election represented a milestone victory for the DPP: Tsai Ing-wen won the presidency as had been expected, and her party won the legislative majority for the first time by taking 68 out of 113 seats. While there had been a number of DPP politicians who opposed gay rights or made homophobic remarks previously, the DPP on the whole appeared more LGBT-friendly than the KMT. Among the nine marriage equality proposals listed in Table 1, the DPP-led pan-green camp outnumbered the KMT-led pan-blue camp in terms of co-signers. During her electoral campaign, Tsai Ing-wen announced her support for marriage equality, while the other two candidates remained silent on the issue.

After taking office, Tsai and her administration appeared non-committal. The Minister of Justice continued to oppose the revision of Civil Code just like his KMT predecessors. As confrontation between LGBT activists and conservatives flared up, Tsai encouraged both sides to calm down to have a dialogue. As DPP lawmakers split into those who favoured a special law and those who insisted on changes to the Civil Code, both factions claimed to have obtained Tsai's blessing.Footnote ⁶⁷ Tsai's refusal to take a firm stance disappointed her erstwhile lesbian and gay supporters.

Despite the fact that DPP seemed to have reneged on the pre-election endorsement, its nomination of seven Constitutional Court judges in September 2016 turned out to be critical for the subsequent breakthrough. During the review sessions, the seven nominees all indicated their conditional or full support for marriage equality. With the influx of liberal judges to the 15-seat Constitutional Court, the historical No. 748 ruling on 24 May 2017 that extended marriage rights to lesbian and gay couples could be expected.

Taiwan's Constitutional Court in the recent decades had largely responded favourably to demands by social movements, including the full election of legislature (1990), equal rights in parenthood (1994), the removal of the international travel ban on males with conscription duty (1997), and more liberal regulations on assembly and demonstration (1998 and 2014). As such, while it was an exaggeration to identify Taiwan's judges as a dynamo for reforms, the Constitutional Court had adapted well to a liberal political environment. The decision to liberalize same-sex marriage in 2017 actually revised some of its previous conservative interpretations that mentioned marriage as a heterosexual union or upheld the prosecution of same-sex publications as “obscene.”Footnote ⁶⁸

The Constitutional Court's progressive ruling would not have been possible without the addition of liberal judges, which came as a result of the DPP's control of executive and legislative branches of the government. The judiciary intervention came at the right moment as the legislature was deeply divided. Facing the unfavourable turn in the situation, some conservative anti-gay leaders were willing to accept partnership or civil unions in lieu of the overhaul in the legal definition of marriage. Lawmakers who advocated for such a special law solution aimed to placate the conservatives, and yet this conciliatory gesture was not acceptable to Taiwan's LGBT campaigners. As a fractured legislature was unable to reach a decision, the court decision incurred the criticism of “legislating from the bench.” For Taiwan's marriage equality campaigners, the judiciary had become the only way to move their agenda forward when executive and legislative branches failed.