Taiwan has a family-orientated culture.
Our families believe that having biological children
is the surest evidence of filial piety.
We are Jovy and Steven.
We are a married same-sex couple living in Taiwan.
what does LGBTQIA+ stand for
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We knew each other at university.
We first met in Taipei.
But we lived in different cities.
We were deeply in love with each other and
having a long-distance relationship was very difficult for us.
how to come out to your parents
When my family discovered our relationship
their financial support
became very limited.
That was when I had to start working,
tutoring to pay for the bus tickets, so we could see each other.
Jovy would take the bus from the south to visit me.
Neither of us had much money at the time.
The return trip took him 10 hours each time, coming to Taipei from the south.
With the vast distance between us,
it was a difficult few years for us.
We had a lot of conflicts with our families in the first two years.
Sometimes, the would try to stop us from seeing each other.
The vigorous disapproval from our families,
made our long-term relationship even more difficult.
It nearly cost us our relationship.
During these struggles,
we took courage from each other
which brought us closer.
marriage equality
There was improvement of same-sex rights in Taiwan last year (2019).
Taiwan passed the Marriage Equality Act.
We went for marriage registration
the first day that the Act was effective.
Jovy saved some of the bus tickets bought at the time.
He framed those bus tickets
and gave them to me as a gift on our wedding day.
It was the most meaningful day of our lives.
The passing of the Marriage Equality Act gave us
a sense of security.
The main change is that, legally,
we can make some important decisions for each other.
And we can
take out insurance for each other,
submit and pay tax.
If we were not married,
we wouldn't have these rights.
We would like to have children.
But it is impossible to adopt
or find a surrogate in Taiwan at the moment.
Even though we can legally wed,
there is still a long was to go on the details,
rights and meaning of marriage equality.
Policies on adoption and surrogacy also
have a lot of room for improvement.
When it comes to topics on LGBTQIA+ as a whole,
we still have a long way to go.
Taiwanese society is still very conservative.
For the majority of people,
it is not easy to come out in their daily life.
We need more same-sex friendly people
to stand up and call out those
homophobic jokes and harrassment of gay people.
Though our wounds will eventually heal,
and we will have thicker skin,
let us be ourselves.
We want to demonstrate to the public that
a same-sex couple is something normal.
We love each other.
We hope one day gay people will have
the right to adopt
equal rights,
so that we can build
an ideal family in the near future.
Finding answers. Finding understanding.