Hong Kong
Borrowed From Peking Duck
Taiwan on Saturday unveiled its draft Human Rights Basic Law which abolishes the death penalty and legalises gay marriage.
If the law is passed, it will make Taiwan the first country in Asia – and the fourth in the world – to legalise gay marriage. The Netherlands, Belgium and Canada have legalised gay marriage.
Vice President Lu Hsiu-lien, head of the Human Rights Consultative Committee under the Presidential Office, unveiled the draft law at a meeting with reporters.
The Basic Law stipulates that the death penalty must be abolished, gay marriage should be legalised and homosexual couples should be allowed to adopt children.
The Basic Law bans cloning human beings, protects equal rights for women and foreign workers, and grants asylum to foreign asylum seekers.
In terms of the death penalty, although Hong Kong only removed the “cruel and unusual” punishment from the books in the late eighties, executions ended in the seventies, and all inmates given the death penalty were pardoned and their sentenced reduced to life imprisonment.
As for Gay Marriages a recent survey in Hong Kong suggests over 70% of people feel that gay people should be allowed the right to have legal and economic protection of marriage.
Now wouldn’t it be something if Asia becomes a leader in ending the discrimination of same sex partnership. It’s not inconceivable. Unlike many countries in the world, these parts never had any sort of Anti-Miscegenation Marriage Laws. (Miscegenation = Mixing of Different Races). It has something to do with allowing colonists to do whatever they want to with the local women, but hey..
Yan Sham-Shackleton Online 