A third gay couple registers their marriage

FOURTH TO WIN THE COSTUME:
Home Office should revoke executive order that prevented 400 international couples from registering marriage, LGBTQ rights group says

An international same-sex couple registered their marriage at a household registration office in Taipei on Friday, weeks after winning a lawsuit against an agency that rejected their previous application, an LGBTQ rights group said.

Taiwan’s Alliance for Promoting Civil Partnership Rights said in a press release that Lu Yin-jen (盧盈任) and her Japanese partner, Eizaburo Ariyoshi, officially registered their marriage earlier in the day.

The couple were accompanied to the registry office by other transnational same-sex couples and covenant members.

Lu’s father watched the proceedings via live stream, the group said.

Lu and Ariyoshi are the third transnational same-sex couple in which one of the partners is from a country or region that does not allow same-sex marriage to register their union in Taiwan after winning a lawsuit against the government with the assistance of pro bono legal services by the alliance.

Despite the legalization of same-sex marriage in 2019, household registration offices across the country have continued to reject such transnational unions, citing a directive from the Ministry of Home Affairs (MOI).

The guideline refers to Article 46 of the Law Governing Choice of Law in Civil Matters Involving Foreign Elements (涉外民事法律適用法), which states that marriage rights depend on the laws of each person’s country of origin. part.

In December last year, Lu and Ariyoshi sued the ministry after two failed registration attempts.

On July 21, the Taipei Administrative High Court ruled that the couple should not have been prevented from registering their marriage.

The alliance said the decision was based on Article 8 of the same law, which states that if the application of the law of a foreign state “results in a violation of public order or morality of the Republic of China”, this foreign law should not be applied.

The general secretary of the Chien Chih-chieh (簡至潔) Alliance called on the ministry to stop preventing couples like Lu and Ariyoshi from registering their marriage in Taiwan by revoking its directive.

While courts have since March last year ruled in favor of four couples who faced similar roadblocks, involving partners from Malaysia, Macao, Singapore and Japan, around 400 couples have been barred from ‘register their union due to the directive,’ the alliance said, adding that the 400 couples include several whose marriages have been registered in other countries.