Conservative Christian groups are getting closer to unseating a progressive legislator from the New Power Party due to his support for same-sex marriage. The strategy is part of an evolving global assault against liberal values which finds its roots in the United States.
The Central Election Commission will announce on Oct. 31 whether a recall attempt against New Power Party (NPP) Executive Chairman Huang Kuo-chang initiated by a conservative umbrella organization earlier this year can proceed to a vote.
The CEC’s decision, which is expected to be rendered on Tuesday, will come after the New Taipei City Election Commission confirmed last week that 26,745 signatures had been collected supporting a recall, thus surpassing the threshold of 10% of eligible voters in the municipality’s 12th electoral district, where Huang was elected, with 51.51% of the vote (80,508 votes), in the January 2016 legislative elections. If deemed valid by the CEC, the recall vote could be held as early as December.
The campaign against the charismatic Huang was initiated in May by the Greater Taipei Stability Power Alliance, whose principal aim is to block the legalization of same-sex marriage in Taiwan, which Huang has actively supported. The Alliance is closely allied with the Faith and Hope League, a political party which ran on an anti-same-sex marriage platform in 2016 and which failed to win a single seat after disastrous negative campaigning. The Alliance’s secretary-general, Yu Hsin-yi, ran on the FHL ticket.
The move to oust Huang coincided with a ruling by Taiwan’s Council of Grand Justices in late May which stated that it was unconstitutional for the country to deny same-sex individuals the right to get married. In their ruling, the Grand Justices stated that the legislature “shall amend or enact relevant laws, in accordance with the ruling of this Interpretation, within two years from the issuance of this Interpretation,” and added that “if relevant laws are not amended or enacted within the said two years, two persons of the same sex who intend to create the said permanent union shall be allowed to have their marriage registration effectuated at the authorities in charge of household registration, by submitting a written document signed by two or more witnesses in accordance with the said Marriage Chapter.”
The ruling was a major upset for conservative forces in Taiwan that have actively sought to prevent the implementation of progressive policies such as marriage equality, a major component of Tsai Ing-wen’s campaign platform in the 2016 elections. In Taiwan as elsewhere, the anti-same-sex marriage movement has been spearheaded by Evangelical Christians from churches such as Bread of Life, the International House of Prayer (IHOP) in Jhongli, Taoyuan, the Agape Taoyuan Leadership Institute, and others (anyone who has attended the many protests held by those groups since 2013 will have encountered the inevitable prayer sessions and Christian songs). Much of the rhetoric and ideology used in the campaign in Taiwan comes from conservative churches and organizations in the United States, including IHOP, the Wagner Institute and MassResistance. In recent years, Taiwanese Evangelical churches have invited American preachers affiliated with IHOP and other anti-homosexual congregations to spread their gospel in Taiwan. Moreover, a number of preachers at Taiwanese churches have received training at conservative institutions in the U.S.
Christians account for approximately 5% of Taiwan’s total population.
Besides opposing the legalization of same-sex unions, the movements in Taiwan have also actively sought to prevent sexual education in schools while promoting abstinence and “true love.”
If those attributes were grounds for recall, then arguably at least 80% of Taiwanese legislators would find themselves out of a job tomorrow.
Although the Alliance, which has done a risible job trying to mask its Christian beliefs, has advanced a number of reasons for initiating Huang’s recall, it is clear to all that its efforts to unseat him are directly related to his support for same-sex marriage, which enjoys majority support across Taiwan, and more than 80% among its youth. The notion that he disrespects public opinion, as the Alliance claims, flies in the face of the fact that his views on same-sex marriage were known well before, and certainly during, the 2016 election campaign. The claim, meanwhile, that Huang is “arrogant,” that he engages in “populism” and grandstands is an equally tenuous one. If those attributes were grounds for recall, then arguably at least 80% of Taiwanese legislators would find themselves out of a job tomorrow. Citizen Congress Watch, an NGO that evaluates the performance of legislators, has given “excellent” and “outstanding” ratings for Huang, who unlike many legislators actually shows up at the Legislative Yuan and is intimately involved in the formulation of policies. In other words, Huang can hardly be faulted for dereliction of duty, though he may have ruffled feathers by tackling corruption.
A successful recall of Huang would be a victory for a band of primarily Christian conservatives whose views are out of sync with current trends in Taiwanese society, and whose tactics have consisted of lies and repeated fear-mongering — homosexuality as sin, legalization of same-sex marriage leading to an AIDS epidemic, bestiality, rape, incest, “brainwashing,” homosexual contagion, the end of Father’s Day, the eventual dissolution of heterosexual marriages, the dilution of the bloodline, and the end of the Republic of China, to name just a few of the tropes that have insulted our intelligence in recent years, all of this the result of a plot by Western pharmaceutical companies that stand to make billions of dollars in profit from the sale of antiretroviral drugs to the plague-infested island.
Undoubtedly the Alliance succeeded in gathering the 26,745 signatures it needed for the second phase of the recall campaign by forming a strategic alliance with the movement that opposes pension reform, another policy which Huang has supported, and thus enlarge the pool of voters upon whose signatures it could count to attain the legal threshold.
NPP Executive Chairman Huang Kuo-chang, center, stands on stage with DPP and KMT legislators during a rally for same-sex marriage outside the Legislative Yuan in Taipei on Dec. 26, 2016 (Photo: J. Michael Cole)
The targeting of legislators and politicians for their support of same-sex marriage finds its origins in the U.S. and represents a tactical shift by the global conservative movement. In an editorial on the conservative Life Site (which “emphasizes the social worth of traditional Judeo-Christian principles” and “understands that abortion, euthanasia, cloning, homosexuality and all other moral, life and family issues are all interconnected in an international conflict affecting all nations”) published in late 2014, MassResistance, whose involvement in Taiwanese politics was exposed earlier this year, lamented that opponents to the “homosexual agenda” have been too passive and must take the fight to their ideological enemies. In the editorial, titled “How activists can stop the ‘gay marriage’ steamroller,” MassResistance makes a series of proposals to fight back against what it describes as a “LGBT dynasty,” a “house of cards that can continue to dominate only through force and pressure.”
“Right now the LGBT activists — and the lawmakers and judges who drink their Kool-Aid — love to use the Marxist refrain that they are ‘on the right side of history,’” the editorial states. Calling for a “change of philosophy, attitude and action,” MassResistance argues that the movement can no longer afford to adopt a “defensive” posture. “We need to start becoming aggressive, taking ground, and charging forward.” After a recital of the usual tropes about Natural Law, “morality,” pseudo-scientific claims and the “demonic nature” of what they are fighting (“which brings us all closer to God”), the editorial proposes a new plan of action. “In the New Movement, people need to confront the politicians, corporations, the media, and others,” it states. “Challenge the judges (and their clerks) who are openly biased taking these cases. Confront the school boards that push this in the schools. Confront the reporters who twist the facts in their articles. Confront the businesses who march in their parades and fund their organizations. Confront the politicians who use your tax money to support their agendas, or who extend the ‘public accommodation’ laws to include perverse behaviors. And stand up to liberals everywhere who seek to intimidate you in social or business settings.”
The agenda proposed by MassResistance is far too familiar to those of us who have followed recent developments in Taiwan to be simple coincidence. It’s a global campaign, and conservative forces are doubling down. Taiwan is now on this battlefield, and Huang stands to become one of its early victims.
After two bullets on civil disobedience, the editorial continues, “Work against pro-LGBT candidates for office. Why is this so hard for us to figure out? What has happened in Houston and Idaho, and similarly in other places across America where religious and civil rights are squashed under harsh LGBT laws, happens because there’s no price to pay for supporting that agenda. That’s also why it’s now become prevelant [sic] in the Republican Party.”
It concludes: “We’ve outlined an aggressive approach to pro-family activism that is fairly revolutionary. We strongly believe it is the only answer. We don’t anticipate current groups, even Tea Party groups, to move in our direction, but we are going to begin doing this ourselves. We have already started the process of scheduling meetings across Massachusetts to engage and re-orient activists. We are also open to helping form groups in other states and even other countries.”
The agenda proposed by MassResistance is far too familiar to those of us who have followed recent developments in Taiwan to be simple coincidence. It’s a global campaign, and conservative forces are doubling down. Taiwan is now on this battlefield, and Huang stands to become one of its early victims.
We will find out on Oct. 31 whether the Central Election Commission deems the signatures collected by the Alliance are valid and, if such is the outcome, when the vote on Huang’s recall will be held. If it comes to this, one must hope that as many voters in New Taipei City’s 12th electoral district will turn up on voting day, as apathy can only help opponents of same-sex marriage who will undoubtedly come out in force. Under new recall rules, only 1/4 of eligible voters in a district (from 1/2 under past regulations) must participate in a vote for it to be valid, or about 62,000 in this case. A recall attempt will be successful if 50% of those vote in favor of unseating a legislator.
This article was updated on 2017/10/27, 09:04 (new recall regulations, last paragraph).
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