Most Taiwanese support same-sex marriage two years after legalization: survey

Taipei, May 23 (CNA) A government survey released on Sunday shows that Taiwanese people's acceptance of same-sex marriage has significantly increased to 60.4 percent in 2021 from 37.4 percent in 2018 before the country legalized same-sex marriage.

The survey conducted by the Department of Gender Quality (DGE) under the Executive Yuan was released a day before the second anniversary of a law on marriage equality taking effect in the country on May 24, 2019.

According to the DGE, a total of 5,871 same-sex couples had registered marriages in Taiwan as of April 2021, since the country became the first in Asia to legalize same-sex marriages in May 2019.

The DGE survey also showed 67.2 percent of respondents agree that same-sex couples should have the right to adopt children while another 72.2 percent of Taiwanese believe homosexual couples can be as good parents as their heterosexual counterparts.

The results show Taiwan society has made great strides toward embracing marriage equality, it said.

In terms of understanding and accepting transgender people, the survey shows that 65.1 percent of the respondents say they don't mind sharing the same public bathrooms with transgender people, up 3.1 percentage points compared with the same survey a year ago.

Another 76 percent of respondents agree that transgender people are free to wear outfits that are most comfortable to them at their schools and workplaces.

Up to 88.9 percent of people said they can work together with transgender people, according to the survey.

Regarding gender stereotypes, the DGE survey reveals that 80 percent of people do not agree that "wives should do more housework than husbands," and another 89 percent agree with the statement that "females and males are both capable of being high ranking supervisors."

The survey was conducted to learn Taiwanese people's latest attitudes toward gender equality and same-sex marriage, as well as homosexual and transgender people, according to DGE.

It was done by telephone interviews among Taiwanese people aged 20 and above from May 13-15 and had 1,080 valid responses and a confidence level of 95 percent, with a margin of error of plus or minus 2.98 percentage points.

Taiwan's Constitutional Court ruled on May 24, 2017 that the country's Civil Code provisions that did not allow same-sex marriage were unconstitutional, giving the government two years to amend them.

In May 2019, the Legislature passed a marriage equality law titled "Act for Implementation of J.Y. Interpretation No. 748" extending to same-sex couples almost all the marriage rights available to heterosexual couples under the Civil Code.

The law went into effect on May 24, 2019, making Taiwan the first country in Asia to legalize same-sex marriage.