Taipei Gay Pride Parades: A 7-Year Photo Retrospective

[PeterRS]

As regular readers will know, I have attended seven Taipei Gay Pride Parades since my first in 2011. I think they are fabulous week-ends, with lots of parties alongside the Parades themselves. At my last there were 160,000 marchers. I believe that is now more than 200,000. Many are dressed up in all sorts of gear. Others, like me, stick to a fun T-shirt and just enjoy watching all the others as I march.  In response to a post in another thread about Bangkok hosting World Pride in 2030, I suggested I post a thread of some of my old photos. Apologies that most have been posted over the last 13 years but it's sometimes fun to remember what a blast that afternon can be and how many gorgeously cute guys there are, both Taiwanese and those flying in just for the parade week-ends. Do try and get over there this year if you can.

 

[hojacat]

I'm only at 5. This year will be my 6th.

 

[hojacat]

On 5/26/2025 at 10:58 PM, PeterRS said:

 In response to a post in another thread about Bangkok hosting World Pride in 2030

Wasn't Bangkok supposed to apply for it in 2028? Looks like they didn't as on Wikipedia it says that the only candidates were Guadalajara and Cape Town. 

Surprised no Asian city have hosted a world pride so far.

[PeterRS]

Bangkok is said to be applyng for 2030, but the city that year will not be chosen for at least another year. I can't see any other Asian city taking the initiative unless it is Taipei. That said, I have not heard that Taipei will be applying but given it's considerably longer - and continuing - history of gay acceptance island-wide, if it came to a vote between the two, I expect Taipei is likely to win out. Hopefully only Bangkok will apply.

[hojacat]

On 6/2/2025 at 6:19 PM, PeterRS said:

Bangkok is said to be applyng for 2030, but the city that year will not be chosen for at least another year. I can't see any other Asian city taking the initiative unless it is Taipei. That said, I have not heard that Taipei will be applying but given it's considerably longer - and continuing - history of gay acceptance island-wide, if it came to a vote between the two, I expect Taipei is likely to win out. Hopefully only Bangkok will apply.

I don't think Taipei is going to apply anytime soon as they might get caught in the same controversy as Kaohsiung did. This year world pride which will take part in Washington DC this weekend was originally scheduled to be hosted by Kaohsiung, Taiwan, marking the first WorldPride to be held in Asia. However, WorldPride and the Kaohsiung hosts came into conflict over the branding of the event, and withdrew in August 2022; WorldPride had requested that the event be named "WorldPride Kaohsiung" or "WorldPride Kaohsiung, Taiwan", despite having previously agreed to using "Taiwan" (which was chosen for alignment with Taiwan Pride, and to be inclusive of plans for associated events outside of Kaohsiung). WorldPride stated that this was for consistency with its prior events (which have typically used the host city name), but reports indicated that WorldPride's changes may have been politically-motivated due to Chinese government policies that do not recognize Taiwan as a separate country from China.

I think another Asian city with the potential of hosting a world pride is Tokyo. This year they moved their pride from April to June and officially called it Tokyo Pride instead of Rainbow pride. The Shinjuku ward government is also pretty gay-friendly, but i guess there is not a strong ush by the local organizers for such an event.

[PeterRS]

2 hours ago, hojacat said:

I think another Asian city with the potential of hosting a world pride is Tokyo. This year they moved their pride from April to June and officially called it Tokyo Pride instead of Rainbow pride. The Shinjuku ward government is also pretty gay-friendly, but i guess there is not a strong ush by the local organizers for such an event.

You may well be right in your comments re Taipei. But I cannot agree with you about Tokyo. I hope I am wrong, but from my experience it just is not going to happen any time soon. There certainly have been quite major developments with more attention being given by various of the 23 wards in the city to their LGBTQ communities. Shibuya was the first iin 2017 and it has been followed by 12 others. The mayor of Suginami ward, Sakoto Nishimoto, told the Japan Times last December that it is "essential to enshrine same-sex marriage in law." The mayors of nine other city wards have called on the government to review the rights of same sex partners. This follows the ruling in the Tokyo High Court last October where the presiding judge stated that not allowing same-sex couples to marry is unconstitutional. He added that the ban is "a groundless legal discrimination based on sexual orientation" which violates two articles of the Japanese Constitution.

In Japan, judges have no rights to overturn laws. Only the national Diet (parliament) can do that. And this is the crux of the problem because the Prime Minister and a considerable number of politicians are against giving same-sex couples the right to marry. Japan has basically had just one party in power for most of the period since the 1950s and that party has a considerable number of ultra-conservative right wing members.

https://www.thepinknews.com/2024/12/29/tokyo-ward-mayors-call-for-more-rights-for-same-sex-couples/

I just believe that the developments in LGBTQ rights have been too slow to host World Pride. Besides, although the Tokyo Gay Pride Marches started way back in 1994 (almost ten years before Taipei started its Pride March), the official Japan Gay guide website estimates that this year there will only be 1,100 marchers!  That no doubt disguises the fact that Pride events around this huge city, which include a large number of entertainment and other spectacles, attract even more than Taipei's 200,000. That perhaps gives greater importance to the 47.2% of the population discovered to be in favour of same-sex marriage by a 2023 Stanford University Study. As with many research studies, how many really hold this view as opposed to those who only feel they should hold the view is unknown.

[hojacat]

21 hours ago, PeterRS said:

But I cannot agree with you about Tokyo. I hope I am wrong, but from my experience it just is not going to happen any time soon. There certainly have been quite major developments with more attention being given by various of the 23 wards in the city to their LGBTQ communities

Well, if a beautiful city like Cape Town, despite its serious public safety issues, can host a WorldPride, Tokyo definitely has the infrastructure and capabilities to host such an event. Keep in mind also that WorldPrides haven't always been hosted in super gay-friendly places. I was a middle school student in Italy when the first WorldPride took place in Rome in 2000, which was a Jubilee year. Besides the expected criticism from the Catholic Church, both the Prime Minister and the Mayor of Rome, though both belonging to left-wing parties, ended up being against the parade. The former said that a gay pride event in a Jubilee year was very inappropriate but that unfortunately he couldn't block it because of the Constitution, and the latter rescinded the city's financial support, though it was then partially restored. However, he insisted that the organizers couldn't use the city's logo for any event.

The next one in Jerusalem was even more problematic, and I think there were even doubts about the personal safety of the attendees at one point.

Why hasn't Tokyo decided to apply for WorldPride? I need to ask my friends in Tokyo more about this, but I would speculate that either there isn't a local gay organization big enough to pursue the candidacy, or if there is, the whole Kaohsiung Pride controversy might have caused them to view InterPride, the organization that assigns the event, with a more doubtful eye. They might think it's an organization with a political agenda that goes beyond gay rights.

Personally, I have been to the last three WorldPrides (NYC, Copenhagen, and Sydney) but I'm going to skip the one in DC. I think the one next year in Amsterdam might be more interesting