Petition for multiple-person family law in Taiwan gains signatures

Victoria Hsu, lawyer and president of the Taiwan Alliance to Promote Civil Partnership Rights (TAPCPR), is collecting signatures on a proposal for new Taiwan marriage laws that would allow both same-sex marriages and legal protections for multiple-person relationships.

The multiple-person family portion of the proposed law would adapt the existing law, which Hsu considers "out of date" and "patriarchal," since it is rooted in the practice of concubinage.

The petition has almost 30,000 signatures so far, and Hsu hopes to acquire one million by the end of 2013.

If Hsu's law is adopted by the government, Taiwain would be the first country in Asia to legalize same-sex marriage -- and one of the first countries in the world with a multiple-person family law.