“Today’s success shows that the consensus in Taiwan is to protect the human rights of LGBTI peoples and promote gender equality,” the alliance said in a statement.īefore the legal change Tuesday, some same-sex couples had spent years challenging the discrimination in Taiwanese courts. The Taiwan Alliance to Promote Civil Partnership Rights, an advocate for LGBT rights on the island, also called the decision a big step toward achieving full marriage equality. “Parental love is the same, and only through joint adoption can we protect the rights and interests of each other by law.”

“Legally, we have finally returned same-sex couples to their children,” she added. “I am very excited that we granted joint adoption rights to same-sex couples today,” said Fan Yun, a lawmaker from the ruling Democratic Progressive Party who was among those that initiated the legal change.

Previously, only heterosexual couples and single people were allowed to adopt children to whom they are not biologically related – creating a situation where if same-sex couples wanted to adopt a child, only one of them could register as the child’s legal parent, even if they both shared the burden of raising them.

Taiwan in 2019 became the first jurisdiction in Asia to legalize same-sex marriage but it stopped short of granting fully equal rights of adoption to same-sex couples. Taiwan’s legislature passed a bill Tuesday that granted same-sex couples the right to jointly adopt a child neither of them are related to, clearing one of the final hurdles in achieving full marriage equality.

From here to equality darity