Love campaign

Love wins. Well, despite all the prayers and fervent well-wishes, even despite the messaging that emphasized and even capitalized on love, supposedly the planet's most powerful emotion - it didn't.

The referendum on gay marriage in Taiwan last week resulted in a huge setback for LGBT rights advocates. Notwithstanding a Supreme Court victory in their favor, and despite hosting the hundred thousand-strong gay pride parade just the week before, the LGBT community received a slap in the face from five or so million voters, who sent a strong message that they really didn't want the same kind of marriage institution for gay people as what the state offered to straight citizens.

The Taiwanese community is still holding on, though, to hope and the law. After all, the referendum is supposedly non-binding, and the court decision still holds. (Meaning, the command of the justices for the legislature - to enact a law respecting the right to marry of gay citizens within two years - is still out there for legislators to obey).

That is the same stand taken by the country's justice department (said by an official called the Judicial Yuan Secretary General). The department said the Constitutional Court's ruling for LGBT rights was untouched. And therefore, the Legislative Yuan will still have to guarantee the rights of LGBTs by enacting that protective law.

But this places the nation's lawmakers in a bind. Legislators have to worry about respecting both their citizens as well as their Constitution. (Or maybe, if they're not afraid of the Constitution, they'll be afraid of the Constitutional court, who could hopefully hold them in contempt?)

What's a good win-win solution for both? How can they respect both the constitutional command, and the political will of their constituents? That will be the challenge for both the legislators as well as the activists, who better think of a winning solution to this conundrum. What a pickle the anti-gay forces have cooked up!

For like it or not, the negative votes are a reality to be grappled with by the LGBT community. The community cannot just ignore five million people who disagree with them on a fundamental constitutional right. LGBT acceptance is still not as mainstream as what the community would like to think it is, or at least as to how it is being projected. They have their work cut out for them: Acceptance by seventy or so percent of their society.

Maybe, if not acceptance for every little fashion oddity or sexual quirk, then at the very least, acceptance for the idea that each individual has the right to choose his or her life partner, and correspondingly, for the state and each member of society in it, to respect that choice.

Acceptance not for how the members of the community are to conduct their lives or pursue their passions or even waste their time and energy in trivial pursuits, but at the very least, acceptance of the essential idea that each one is free to plot the course of their lives, including whom to love.

That is what the activists and advocates have to focus on - a campaign to win their fellow citizens, on just that core principle. (My unsolicited advice, which one could judge as only coming from a kibitzer from the neighboring island, but hey, I have good intentions).

The conservative anti-gay forces out to torch the gay marriage boat have been running campaigns based on judgmental prejudices. And we see many examples of how fearmongering has worked, from bogus preaching about how the gay lifestyle will corrupt kids to even the Trump-rants against immigrants.

All that fear and hate can be swept aside by blunt implementation of the court decision, sure. Perhaps though, by employing steadfast patience, by engaging in rational discourse and level-headed responses, the LGBT community can also claim a victory, not just legally, but also intellectually and emotionally.

That might end up being true love, right?