Jacques Picoux
After 35 years together, the law treated him as a stranger to his partner – his death gave Taiwan’s fight for marriage equality new urgency.
Jacques Picoux was born in France and moved to Taiwan in 1979. For decades he taught French language and literature at National Taiwan University in Taipei. He painted, held an exhibition of his work in 2012 and played a small role in Hou Hsiao-hsien’s film “The Assassin” (2015). In Taipei’s queer community he was a well-known figure.
For more than three decades he lived with his partner Tseng Ching-chao. In the eyes of the law, however, the two were strangers. When Tseng fell ill with cancer, Picoux had no right to take part in decisions about his treatment; that right lay with Tseng’s family. After Tseng died in 2015, Picoux also lost his security: the flat they had shared for many years was registered in his partner’s name.
On 16 October 2016 Picoux died after a fall from his flat in Taipei. Friends believed he had taken his own life because he never recovered from the loss. If you are struggling, please reach out to someone you trust or to a crisis line in your country.
His story caused outrage in Taiwan and put pressure on the government of President Tsai Ing-wen, who had promised marriage equality. Shortly afterwards, legislators of her party introduced a new bill. In 2017 the Constitutional Court ruled that excluding same-sex couples from marriage was unconstitutional, and in May 2019 Taiwan became the first country in Asia to open marriage to all. Many remembered Jacques Picoux on that day.