Taiwan has become the first country in Asia to legalize same-sex marriage.
The highest court in the country just ruled a few hours ago that Article 972 of the Civil Code, which focuses on that fac that marriage is between a man and a woman, is unconstitutional.
LGBT rights campaigner Chi Chia-wei started the case when he treid to register his marriage back in 2013.
Chia-wei was rejected, and spurred on to make a change in the law. He petitioned for this change, which then lead to legal cases, which then moved all the way up to the highest court in the country, the Legislative Yuen.
As Chia-wei moved forward, he was joined by LGBT activist groups, municipal authorities in Taipei seeking clarity over other same-sex marriage requests, and citizens who were members of the LGBT community or allies of the community.
All of his effort had met some adversity though.
It has been hotly debated for the past year on whether or not the country would legalize gay marriage and there was strong opposition against it.
A few months ago, protestors took the streets to express their outrage towards the fight for equality. Members of the Rescue Taiwan Hope Alliance saw same-sex marriage as immoral and many religious groups joined them in the fight.
In addition, several polls were taken and it seems that the general populace's thoughts on the matter were nearly split in half.
That said, Chi Chai-wei eventually prevailed as the legalization has now been approved and Taiwan’s parliament, the Legislative Yuan, will now either create new laws allowing same-sex marriage or amend the civil code to allow same-sex couples to marry.
Though, members of Taiwan’s LGBT community hope that the government will just amend the old laws as new ones will only seem limited.
The government has two years to decide which way to go however, as the 14-judge panel gave them that amount of time to implement the ruling or else same-sex couples could just register for marriage anyway.
Watch this video to see some of the people’s reaction when they heard the news.