Oct 6, 2026 · 1 hr 11 min · 12 segments
Rainbow umbrellas in the rain. Sixty-six votes. A question 33 years old, finally answered. Tonight: how Taiwan became the first place in Asia where same-sex couples could marry. It begins in 1986…
To a street outside the parliament, where umbrellas open in every color at once.
To the smell of wet pavement and temple incense and steam rising from a noodle stall on the corner.
To a small government office in the shadow of a very tall tower, where a stack of forms is waiting on the counter.
This is the story of how one man's question, asked in nineteen eighty-six, became the answer for a whole island.
Imagine, if you will, a Friday morning in Taipei on the seventeenth of May, twenty nineteen.
It is raining.
Not a storm, just the steady, warm, patient rain of a subtropical spring.
It drums on the awnings of the shops along Qingdao East Road.
It runs in little rivers along the curb.
It beads on the leaves of the banyan trees and drips from their hanging roots, and it falls on a crowd.
Thousands of people are standing in the street outside the Legislative Yuan, Taiwan's parliament, and more are arriving every hour.
They have come in raincoats and plastic ponchos.
They have come holding umbrellas, and many of the umbrellas are rainbows.
They carry signs.
They sit on folding stools and on sheets of plastic spread over the wet asphalt.
Someone is passing out hot drinks.
Someone else is passing out roses.
Inside the building, lawmakers are about to vote.
Outside, the crowd waits and listens and does not go home.
Somewhere in that crowd is a man of sixty.
He has a kind, round face and short gray hair.
He has been waiting for this vote far longer than anyone else on the street.
He has been waiting, in one way or another, for thirty-three years.
To a street outside the parliament, where umbrellas open in every color at once.
To the smell of wet pavement and temple incense and steam rising from a noodle stall on the corner.
To a small government office in the shadow of a very tall tower, where a stack of forms is waiting on the counter.
This is the story of how one man's question, asked in nineteen eighty-six, became the answer for a whole island.
Imagine, if you will, a Friday morning in Taipei on the seventeenth of May, twenty nineteen.
It is raining.
Not a storm, just the steady, warm, patient rain of a subtropical spring.
It drums on the awnings of the shops along Qingdao East Road.
It runs in little rivers along the curb.
It beads on the leaves of the banyan trees and drips from their hanging roots, and it falls on a crowd.
Thousands of people are standing in the street outside the Legislative Yuan, Taiwan's parliament, and more are arriving every hour.
They have come in raincoats and plastic ponchos.
They have come holding umbrellas, and many of the umbrellas are rainbows.
They carry signs.
They sit on folding stools and on sheets of plastic spread over the wet asphalt.
Someone is passing out hot drinks.
Someone else is passing out roses.
Inside the building, lawmakers are about to vote.
Outside, the crowd waits and listens and does not go home.
Somewhere in that crowd is a man of sixty.
He has a kind, round face and short gray hair.
He has been waiting for this vote far longer than anyone else on the street.
He has been waiting, in one way or another, for thirty-three years.
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