DIY-Ing Queerness in Taiwanese Popular Religion

In 2019, the Taiwanese parliament legalized same-sex marriage, having been pushed to do so per juridical rule by the Constitutional Court. Hailed abroad as a monumental step, same-sex marriage nevertheless remains a hotly contested issue in Taiwanese domestic politics, with supporters and opponents split along generational and rural-urban lines. While most discussions of the expression of gendered identities in Taiwan emphasize the country’s progressive side, taking an implicit or explicit vantage point from cosmopolitan Taipei, the capital, in this presentation I am interested in what political negotiations look like at the grassroots level in a rural township. What role does religion play in such processes?

During nineteen months of dissertation fieldwork in both urban and rural Taiwan, I worked closely with an association of young devotees of the goddess Mazu I call DIY Mazu because of their tendency to source their ritual practices and equipment from within the group. Organized as an autonomous, semi-private club, DIY Mazu belongs to what scholars call popular religion in Taiwan. Popular religion matters to this discussion in two ways: First, it is generally associated with a traditional, patriarchal worldview, and second, given low institutional barriers from other aspects of social life it easily takes up and shapes popular trends in society at large. Curiously, DIY Mazu had a large number of queer members, including its charismatic founder and his partner, but never addressed this aspect of their identities in public. As the group grew in membership, tacit strategies—including silences—instead became more prominent, by which DIY Mazu negotiated belonging for its queer constituency while aiming not to “upset” traditionally-minded members. Focusing on shared religious practices instead, such strategies have implications for finding compromise in an affectively charged political environment even if they fall short of open activism.