Marriage equality (婚姻平权)

Marriage equality means same-sex couples can marry under the same law as everyone else, with the full rights and duties of spouses. The Netherlands was the first country to achieve it, in 2001.

In the Chinese-speaking world the landmark is Taiwan. In 2017, Constitutional Interpretation No. 748 held that the Civil Code’s failure to protect same-sex marriage was unconstitutional and gave legislators two years to fix it. On May 17, 2019 — IDAHOBIT, fittingly — the legislature passed the implementing act, which took effect on May 24, making Taiwan the first place in Asia where same-sex couples can register to marry.

The rest of the region needs to be described separately, not lumped together. Mainland China has no same-sex marriage and no partnership registry; the main tools available under current law are yiding jianhu (voluntary guardianship) paired with a will. Hong Kong sits in between: court rulings have recognized overseas same-sex marriages for specific purposes such as dependant visas, taxation, and civil service benefits, and in 2023 the Court of Final Appeal required the government to establish an alternative framework for recognizing same-sex partnerships.

Register note: “marriage equality” is the standard term in advocacy and formal writing — more precise than “legalizing gay marriage,” because the point is equal access to one shared institution, not a separate “special marriage.”

Common misreading: confusing it with civil union, a separate status with typically fewer rights. Taiwan’s 2019 law, though enacted as a special act, provides marriage registration — it is marriage.