Taiwan will become the first country in Asia to legalise same-sex marriage, after a landmark ruling by the constitutional court, Sydney Morning Herald reports.
The court ruled on Wednesday that a civil law defining marriage as a union between a man and a woman violates constitutional guarantees of equal protection.
The Taiwan News reported the court ruled that parliament has two years to either amend the law or create a new law.
While the judges acknowledged it was a controversial social and political issue, but said: “these petitions involve the protection of people’s fundamental rights”.
“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.
“Nor will it alter the social order established upon the existing opposite-sex marriage.
“Furthermore, the freedom of marriage for two persons of the same sex, once legally recognised, will constitute the collective basis, together with opposite-sex marriage, for a stable society.
“The need, capability, willingness and longing, in both physical and psychological senses, for creating such permanent unions of intimate and exclusive nature are equally essential to homosexuals and heterosexuals, given the importance of the freedom of marriage to the sound development of personality and safeguarding of human dignity.”
The ruling said both types of the union should be protected by the constitution.