Thousands of people from across the country, as well as guests from overseas, joined in the spirited parade alongside regular downtown traffic. The marchers were given a single lane for their 3.5 kilometer march, which began at 2 p.m. at Taipei City Hall and ended at Huashan Culture Park with a festival, a symbolic wedding ceremony between four lesbian couples and several parties that lasted until dawn.
Members of Taiwan's gay and lesbian community have held a parade in the fall each year since 2003, with participants journeying from countries across the region, including China, Singapore, Japan and Australia, to attend the event. Despite lingering social stigma surrounding the issue of homosexuality, gay and lesbian awareness is alive and well in Taiwan, which many consider to be one of the forerunners of gay rights in Asia.
Tokyo has held gay pride parades since 1994, and they are held regularly throughout the region, including Seoul, Hong Kong and Bangkok. The first Taiwanese parade was in 2003, and although it attracted only about 1,000 marchers, by 2004 the number of participants increased threefold, growing to 5,000 last year. This year, official estimates put the number of marchers at around 8,000. This is nothing compared to the 200,000 marchers that attended the 2002 Bangkok Gay Pride parade, but it is impressive for a country like Taiwan.
Not everyone who marches in the parade is a "comrade," as homosexuals in Taiwan refer to themselves. Some are bisexual, others are transgender, and quite a few heterosexuals join the march as well. Such was the case with Amanda Harvey, an Australian English teacher who lives and works in Taipei.
"It reminds me of Sydney 20 years ago," she said of her first Taiwan Pride parade. "It's not huge, but it's a very good start. All it needs is more publicity and more support."
Nor did everyone dress up for the occasion. Many, in fact, dressed down for the parade, even wearing masks to conceal their faces, fearful of television and newspaper coverage that might out them to their families. Others wore hats to camouflage their identities, as Joy, a 27-year-old lesbian, chose to do.
Joy, who asked that her last name be withheld to protect her identity, has attended the parade each year for the past three years. "It's a kind of release," she said. "It's the only day we can yell and scream and say, 'we're gay!'"
At this year's parade, Joy was dressed modestly in casual jeans and a white, collared shirt. The only hint linking her to the parade, besides the fact that she is marching alongside drag queens and men in Speedos, is the rainbow hair-tie peeking through the hole in the back of a wide-brimmed, black Nike hat fitted snugly over her head. "Today, a hat is enough," she said.
Recalling previous years, when she hid her identity behind a surgical mask like the ones commonly worn by motorcyclists and pedestrians in smoggy Taipei, Joy admitted that she has so far kept her sexual orientation a secret from her parents and younger sister, and has no plans to tell them anytime soon. Whenever a cameraman or photographer got close to her during the parade, she immediately turned around and began to walk backwards, shouting, "camera!" as a warning to her friends, many of whom were also protecting their identities with large, awkward baseball caps.
By the end of the day, however, Joy and her friends had cast off their guises and were marching proudly, waving flags with their arms and cheeks covered in rainbow face-paint.
The theme of this year's parade, "Go Together," attracted a multitude of people, from plainclothes marchers like Joy to spandex-wearing members of an all-gay Taiwanese swim team. Gay parishioners of the Tong-Kwang Church were also in attendance, as were many parents of homosexuals who wanted to show their support.
"People seem to think that being gay only affects the individual," remarked Cheng Chi-wei, director of the Taiwan Tongzhi Hotline Association, one of the parade's key organizers. "But, if you think about it, being gay is actually a family affair, and it affects an entire family. So this year, we had a lot of families of gays and lesbians join the parade, as well as the children of gays and lesbians."
As the parade wound its way through Taipei City, Jim Wang was sitting at his desk in his parents' house in Taipei County, brooding over homework. Wang, a 22-year-old graduate student of journalism and communications at Chinese Culture University, admitted he has never attended a gay pride parade. In fact, he is not entirely sure whether or not he is gay. "It's hard to say if I'm gay, because I've never had a relationship with a man," he said. "But, I would love to."
Like most gay men, Wang started off life thinking he was straight. In high school, he had girlfriends--two to be precise, each of which lasted about six months. Things changed, however, after he started college and was exposed to "foreigners" and "foreign men," for whom, he is not afraid to admit, he has an affinity. Instead of flirting with the girls in his class, Wang found himself more interested in clothes and fashion; when a good-looking woman passed him by, for example, he would notice what she wore and how her clothes matched, not necessarily her facial features or curvaceous figure. It is no surprise, then, that Wang seems always to be dressed impeccably.
Wang started paying attention to his appearance in high school, before the thought that he might be gay had even crossed his mind. It was not until his second year of college that he became curious, and now, "I really feel like I want to be with men rather than women," he said. He has been to a few gay bars in Taipei, once with a group of friends and the second time alone. Despite his curiosity, he is shy and self-conscious, and ultimately lacks confidence when it comes to approaching men or reciprocating their advances. His lack of experience only adds to his sense of vulnerability. "Should I act like myself," he has wondered, "or do I have to put on an act?"
Such issues are common among newcomers, says Cheng, who has worked as a volunteer and social worker in the gay community for nearly a decade. Most people who call the Taiwan Tongzhi Hotline, he explained, do so because "they don't know if they're gay, they think they are but don't want to be gay, or have some sort of similar inner conflict." Other reasons may be "emotional support not available from co-workers or even close friends," or to find a sympathetic ear after experiencing "discrimination encountered in school or at work."
In Taiwan, the opposition to homosexuality is uniquely different from the situation in the West, where religion plays a large part in its condemnation. Taiwanese culture is greatly influenced by Buddhism--as are many other countries in Asia--which neither encourages nor discourages the practice. The opposition to homosexuality in Taiwan, rather, arises from another influence, and one at least as strong as Buddhism: Confucianism. This ideology espouses deeply rooted social codes and family values and stresses the importance of propagating the next generation.
Another, rather universal stigma attached to homosexuality is its perceived linkage to the spread of HIV/AIDS, which is a growing concern in Taiwan. According to the ROC Center for Disease Control, more than 12,000 Taiwanese are HIV positive. Cheng argued that although AIDS undeniably affects the gay community, it is just as critical an issue for heterosexuals.
Cheng, now 30, is working on his master's degree in public health at Taipei's National Yang-Ming University. He often speaks about public health at colleges and universities around the island, and he has found a life-threatening level of ignorance about the disease, even among educators. "Of the 100 teachers I surveyed, only five could tell me what 'safe sex' was. Some teachers thought olive oil and Vaseline had something to do with it."
"The problem is not the availability of condoms, which you can buy everywhere," he explained. "It is that we are unwilling to address the real issue." The real issue, Cheng feels, is sex itself, and the reluctance to discuss sex in a public sphere. If discussion of sex remains such uncharted territory among heterosexuals, Cheng argued, what hope do homosexuals have?
Hence, Cheng and the organizers of Taiwan Pride 2006 felt that "Go Together" was an appropriate theme for this year's parade. As the visibility of the homosexual community in Taiwan continues to grow, it becomes increasingly important not only to combat discrimination against homosexuals, but also to examine how the entire community can be educated about sex and gender issues.