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Introduction <p>Taiwan’s 2019 legalisation of same-sex marriage, the first in Asia, carried an anomaly that received far less attention: couples were ineligible to register if one partner was a mainland Chinese national. For LGBTQ+ Taiwanese in binational relationships, the same law that granted recognition also imposed categorical exclusion. How citizens made sense of that contradiction, i.e., what it reveals about the limits of rights discourse under conditions of geopolitical threat, is the question this study pursues.</p> Methods <p>The study analyses 2,595 YouTube comments (49,516 words) collected between November 2024 and June 2025, drawn from 15 purposively selected news videos published between January 2023 and June 2025, each exceeding 10,000 views. Coding was conducted in NVivo 14 through a two-stage process: an initial inductive pass identifying dominant discursive themes, rhetorical strategies, and affective markers, followed by a Critical Discourse Analysis (CDA) stage drawing on Van Leeuwen’s legitimation framework and van Dijk’s ideological discourse structures.</p> Results <p>Four discursive dimensions structured the debate: securitised narratives recasting Chinese partners as infiltration threats; progressive narratives positioning Taiwan as a beacon of liberal democracy; platform affordances amplifying affective and extreme voices over deliberative exchange; and six core tensions, including security versus equality and love versus fraud. A notable finding was that some LGBTQ+-identified commenters simultaneously asserted their own sexual identity and endorsed exclusion of Chinese nationals, illustrating what Butler terms the ambivalence of recognition.</p> Conclusions <p>Cross-strait same-sex marriage appears to function as a contested sovereignty site where sexual modernisation and national security imperatives are set into direct, often unresolvable tension. Progressive legal reform can reproduce exclusion through new idioms; universal rights claims encounter their limits precisely where intimate citizenship intersects with geopolitical anxiety.</p> Policy Implications <p>Advocates cannot treat marriage equality and national security as separate discursive domains; effective reform requires engaging cross-strait anxieties directly rather than dismissing them.</p>

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Love, Spies, and Sovereignty: Discursive Battles over Taiwan’s Cross-Strait Same-Sex Marriage Policy

  • 期刊论文

  • 发表日期：

    2026年4月9日

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  • Aiden Yeh

摘要

Introduction

Taiwan’s 2019 legalisation of same-sex marriage, the first in Asia, carried an anomaly that received far less attention: couples were ineligible to register if one partner was a mainland Chinese national. For LGBTQ+ Taiwanese in binational relationships, the same law that granted recognition also imposed categorical exclusion. How citizens made sense of that contradiction, i.e., what it reveals about the limits of rights discourse under conditions of geopolitical threat, is the question this study pursues.

Methods

The study analyses 2,595 YouTube comments (49,516 words) collected between November 2024 and June 2025, drawn from 15 purposively selected news videos published between January 2023 and June 2025, each exceeding 10,000 views. Coding was conducted in NVivo 14 through a two-stage process: an initial inductive pass identifying dominant discursive themes, rhetorical strategies, and affective markers, followed by a Critical Discourse Analysis (CDA) stage drawing on Van Leeuwen’s legitimation framework and van Dijk’s ideological discourse structures.

Results

Four discursive dimensions structured the debate: securitised narratives recasting Chinese partners as infiltration threats; progressive narratives positioning Taiwan as a beacon of liberal democracy; platform affordances amplifying affective and extreme voices over deliberative exchange; and six core tensions, including security versus equality and love versus fraud. A notable finding was that some LGBTQ+-identified commenters simultaneously asserted their own sexual identity and endorsed exclusion of Chinese nationals, illustrating what Butler terms the ambivalence of recognition.

Conclusions

Cross-strait same-sex marriage appears to function as a contested sovereignty site where sexual modernisation and national security imperatives are set into direct, often unresolvable tension. Progressive legal reform can reproduce exclusion through new idioms; universal rights claims encounter their limits precisely where intimate citizenship intersects with geopolitical anxiety.

Policy Implications

Advocates cannot treat marriage equality and national security as separate discursive domains; effective reform requires engaging cross-strait anxieties directly rather than dismissing them.