‘Only filial piety can produce heirs, not homosexuals!’: an exploration of the glocalised rhetoric of the pro-family movement in Taiwan

ABSTRACT

Taiwan became the first Asian country to legalise same-sex marriage in 2019. The call of legalising same-sex marriage began in 2013, along with the emergence of the Christian-led pro-family movement. Religious backlash came to its peak in 2013 and successfully gained politicians’ and public’s support to fight against same-sex marriages and LGBT-inclusive gender equity education. The rhetoric device of the pro-family movement in Taiwan can be connected to rhetoric devices of pro-family and anti-gender movements across the globe. By analysing the narrative of two Christian newspapers, Chinese Christian Tribune and Christian Daily, this article points out three perspectives that made up the picture of Confucian apocalypse. In this article, the concept of ‘Confucian apocalypse’ is used to illustrate the process of indigenisation of global pro-family and anti-gender movements in Taiwan where the Christian population is around 5.5%.

KEYWORDS:

• Christian right
• marriage equality
• pro-family movement
• anti-gender

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author(s).

Notes

1. Prior to the 2000s, objections to same-sex marriages were based on the traditional notion that marriages should be limited between men and women, not one man and one woman because of the traditions of men keeping concubines. Homosexuality was only seen as a sexual perversion disrupting the social order, and not as a sin in a religious sense.

2. The political party that ruled over Taiwan after World War II for four decades.

3. A political party started from fighting against KMT’s dictatorship and fought for the status of Taiwan as an independent nation.

4. Three of the referendum questions were initiated by the pro-family activists to say no to LGBT-inclusive gender equity education and same-sex marriages, whereas two of the referendum questions were initiated by pro-LGBTQ+ activists to say yes to LGBT-inclusive gender equity education and same-sex marriages.

5. The Presbyterian Church Taiwan issued a pastoral letter stating its opposition to the legalisation of same-sex marriage in 2014. The discursive devices employed in the letter highly resembled the rhetoric of The Society for Truth and Light in Hong Kong.

6. When studying the religious affiliations of the Mainlanders – people who fled from mainland China to Taiwan with the KMT government in 1949, Chen (2008) shows that approximately 13% of the Mainlander’s population were Protestant or Catholic, whereas only 2.5% of local Taiwanese people were Protestant or Catholic. Mainlanders were awarded institutional positions of privilege during the martial law period, which resulted in social and political divisions between them and local Taiwanese people.

7. LINE is a communication app similar to WhatsApp, with 90% of Taiwanese population as its users. In Thailand, 2/3 of the population use LINE. (Data released in 2018.)

8. The statement chose the word xing (性) to refer to sexual behaviour, not xing-bie (性別) that refers to gender.