Taiwan Alliance to Promote Civil Partnership Rights (TAPCPR) will host the ‘2019 Ketagalan Boulevard Wedding Banquet’ on May 25th, 2019 (Sat) on the Ketagalan Boulevard in front of the Presidential Office Building. At the banquet there will be roughly 1,600 guests (160 tables), guests of many same-sex couples, friends and families of the newly-weds, and our long-term comrades in the battle for marriage-equality. Altogether we will celebrate the beginning of a new chapter in the history of legalizing same-sex marriage in Taiwan.

In 2013, when we put forward three diverse family bills to the Legislature Yuan (Taiwan’s parliament), TAPCPR held the ’97 Banquet’ on the very same Ketagalan Boulevard with about 1,200 guests (120 tables). Back then we invited our guests to return to the same spot when the bill is passed. And May 25th this year is the day we honor our promise.

TAPCPR invites those who didn’t manage to get a ticket to the banquet to the venue to enjoy the lively outdoor performance at the stage at the Jinfu Gate. From 5 pm on, our MC, Annie from Russia, will host staged performance and introduce the performers. The program consists of performances by jazz diva Jasmine Shih, G-Major Chorus and Kini & Jay Band, two short speeches on the rights of transnational same-sex couples, and the prayer from Reverend Joseph Chang. 

The ‘2019 Ketagalan Boulevard Wedding Banquet’ will begin at 7 pm. At the banquet, the guests will be treated to traditional Taiwanese wedding banquet meals as well as a series of lively performance. The highlight of the event will be the ‘mass same-sex wedding ceremony’. Towards the end of the banquet we will look back on the long road to marriage equality in Taiwan and look forward to the future prospects with TAPCPR.

Concerning the performance, the banquet will kick off with the award-winning singer/songwriter Eve Ai, queen of the fairies, whose album Fade to Exist received  nominations in 5 categories at this year’s Golden Melody Awards. Apart from performing love songs for the LGBTQI community, Even Ai will bring with her a mysterious VCR as a special gift to the audience.

With Eve Ai’s blessings, the banquet will move on to the highlight of the evening – the “mass same-sex wedding ceremony.” 20 same-sex couples, dressed in formal wedding attire, will walk down the aisle (on the Ketagalan Boulevard) and receive blessing of the celebrant, director Wang Shaudi. The couples will then, with director Wang as the witness, exchange rings and complete the wedding ceremony. Director Wang Shaudi is the driving force behind the well-acclaimed Qseries television drama and a multiple award-winning director/producer/script writer. Director Wang always focuses her works on issues of social concerns and the director often advocates causes close to her heart on sites of activism. So it is of particular significance that director Wang serves as our wedding celebrant and gives her blessing to the newly-weds.

After the wedding ceremony, singer Li Te-Yun will perform songs from her two albums View on Life Vol. 1&2. Li has walked away with multiple awards at various major music awards. Her soothing vocal accompanied by guitar voices songs of equal rights with courage. After the performance, TAPCPR’s solicitors Neil Pan and Daniel Chen will jog down the 10-year memory lane and look back on the ’10-year retrospective on diverse family movement’.

In the past decade, in order to achieve marriage equality, TAPCPR has mobilized nearly all possible legal procedures in modern democracy, from proposing the three diverse family bills at the Legislature Yuan, to staging streets protests and rallies, to battling through the legal procedures at court and to winning the constitutional court interpretation no. 748. Last year we suffered a major setback from a series of  gruelling and demeaning referendums debates and battle, but this year we are welcoming the final legislation of same-sex marriage. The people we feel most grateful to are the LGBTQI community, our volunteers and supporters who have stood by us along this arduous journey. 

In order to celebrate this occasion, at the climax of this banquet we have 9 drag queens, 4 Go Go Boys and DJ Rainbowchild to led us to the dance for all and equality.

Last, the founders of TAPCPR, solicitor Victoria Hsu and general secretary Chih-Chieh Chien, will conclude the banquet by sharing ‘unfinished business pertaining to marriage equality’ and look to the future with attendants: ‘A ten-year battle for the same-sex wedding banquet; never forget the equal rights battle that brought us together from the beginning.” TAPCPR has made a public announcement, “we aim to repeal the special same-sex marriage bill in two years’ time and make the Civil Code apply to all.”

In the future there are still many goals to be achieved, including rights of transnational same-sex couples, co-adopting rights for the same-sex couples, loosening the legal regulations concerning artificial reproduction, and transgender rights. TAPCPR will go on to advocate legalizating of civil partnership and multiple-person family system. These are the unfinished business of the marriage equality. So, TAPCPR will fight on.