Remember this man.
His name is Chi Chia Wei, the very first gay man in Taiwan who dared to come out of closet in public back in 1986, while the country was still under martial law.
Mr. Chi had been fighting to legalize same sex marriage for 41 years.
He and his fellow comrades put the very first version of same sex marriage act in the parliament in 2002.
In 2005, after the act was suspended, he made his first attempt to appeal to the Constitutional court. The court ruled the current civil code which excluded same sex marriage was ‘constitutional’.
In 2016, the civil code amendments past the first reading then the committee with Godspeed. And then it suddenly stopped in early 2017, for Mr Chi’s second appeal had made it to the Constitutional court the second time.
The court gave a historical ruling this afternoom: the current civil code is deem unconstitutional for not including same sex marriage. The parliament must make amends in two years to fulfill civil code’s constitutional role. If the parliament fails to do that in 2 years, then same sex marriage will automatically become legal.
This is a victory for Mr Chi and so many others in every possible sense.