It's a sad, sad day for our nation's proud opponents of marriage equality. And that's especially worrying since those people don't typically seem all that happy to begin with.
It was jubilantly announced on Wednesday that the Taiwanese courts had knocked down the current law defining marriage as being between a man and a woman on the grounds that it "violates constitutional guarantees of equal protection."
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Taiwan to allow same-sex marriage
Taiwan set to become the first Asian country to allow same sex-marriage following a ruling by the country's constitutional court.
What's more, the court added that the "creation of a permanent union of intimate and exclusive nature for the committed purpose of managing a life together by two persons of the same sex will not affect the application of the Marriage Chapter to the union of two persons of the opposite sex" – almost as though the extension of civil rights to same-sex couples will have zero effect on opposite sex couples. Why, can you even imagine?
And this is going to cause sorrow in some marriage equality opponents, especially its parliamentary poster boy: Tasmanian senator Eric Abetz.
![Tasmanian senator Eric Abetz.](http://web.archive.org./web/20170526012912im_/https://www.fairfaxstatic.com.au/content/dam/images/g/u/l/y/2/q/image.related.articleLeadwide.620x349.gwcwn0.png/1495747742951.jpg)
See, he has been especially relying on our regional neighbours holding firm on traditional marriage – especially since those seditious New Zealanders got all reasonable about civil rights and personal freedom in 2013.
Back in July 2015 he articulated one of the most creatively silly arguments against gay marriage: to wit, that no Asian countries had made it legal, and thus we couldn't consider such a thing here. You know, since Australia is part of Asia.
"The Labor Party and other journalists tell us time and time again that we are living in the Asian century, tell me how many Asian countries have redefined marriage?" the plucky senator opined on ABC radio. "Are we in the Asian century or not? It's amazing how certain people try to pick and choose in relation to debates."
Speaking of picking and choosing, Eric's otherwise been very clear about how Australia is a nation of Judeo-Christian values, so it might seem a smidgen opportunistic to have decided that in this particular example he'd suddenly embrace convenient regional prejudices rather than, say, the examples of all the other English-speaking nations of his beloved Judeo-Christian tradition.
Of course, Eric had something of a problem in that Britain, Ireland, the US, New Zealand, Canada, even South Africa have made marriage equality the law of the land with zero negative consequences, and thus the circumstances demanded his excitingly abrupt pivot to Asia.
And sure, it didn't quite have the same elegant lunacy of Barnaby Joyce's memorable "Indonesia will shun our gay cows" argument, but it at least enjoyed a comparable relationship with reality.
And Taiwan embracing same-sex marriage, which looks set to be legislated any old second now, ruins the otherwise popular claim that marriage equality is an unimportant obsession of western progressives (and, um, a lot of South America), since Taiwan is a Chinese satellite nation that's not even a member of the United Nations.
Of course, Abetz might mourn the loss of Asia, but he still has other great arguments to rely upon. After all, there's still the "b-b-but then people won't assume I'm heterosexual even though I'm married" defence. Or the ever-popular "b-b-but what about the children?" argument, which admittedly rests upon ignoring the fact that a) not all married people have children, b) not all children are born to married people, and c) there are already families with same-sex parents in any case, who presumably are getting a bit sick of being talked about as though they don't exist.
And sure, you might think it's pretty pathetic that yet another country has lapped us on this matter even as the likes of Abetz bleat about how our enviable freedom is under constant and unceasing threat by... um, people wanting the freedom to marry? Presumably they'd be using up our finite stockpile of freedom, which Abetz needs for attacking the insidious scourge of scary colourful flags
Then again, now that an Asian country has taken the step toward ratifying marriage equality, maybe he will be totally in favour of Australia following suit.
After all, he'd hate to look like he's picking and choosing, surely?
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