What happened
The path here is worth setting out precisely because it illustrates a genuine democratic tension rather than a simple victory: Taiwan's Constitutional Court ruled in May 2017 that denying same-sex couples the right to marry was unconstitutional and gave the legislature two years to bring the law into compliance. In November 2018, in a referendum held alongside other votes, 67% of the roughly 55% of eligible voters who participated voted specifically against amending the Civil Code itself to include same-sex marriage — a clear expression of majority public sentiment against the most direct form of legal equality.
Tsai's government did not defy the court, and did not ignore the referendum result either: it complied with both by creating a separate law rather than amending the Civil Code, extending marriage rights and most associated benefits to same-sex couples through a distinct legal instrument. Human Rights Watch and other advocates welcomed the substantive outcome while noting the separate-law approach fell short of genuine full equality in specific areas, including cross-national marriage recognition and joint adoption rights for same-sex couples, which were not fully resolved until further legal changes in subsequent years.
The achievement is real: no other government in Asia has managed this, and Taiwan's approach — following the court's constitutional ruling rather than letting a referendum override it, while still creating a distinct rather than fully integrated legal framework — is frequently cited internationally as a model for how democratic institutions and popular opinion can be reconciled without either simply overriding the other.