A transgender couple who legally married before one of them sought recognition of her new gender plan to take the Taiwanese Government to court after it stripped them of their marriage license in the first case of its kind.

Abbygail Wu and Ji-yi Wu both transitioned from male to female in July last year and were married in October but Ji-yi did not seek to register her new gender with the government until this year – at which point their marriage license was cancelled by the Interior Ministry.

Up until that point they had been viewed as legally married by the government.

The couple have been backed in their efforts by lawmaker Cheng Li-chun of the main opposition Democratic Progressive Party who says cancelling the couple’s marriage license was an illegal act.

‘In the eyes of government officials, gender is far more important than the value of marriage and family,’ Ji-yi said of the decision to AFP.

Ji-yi asked how a legal marriage could just be revoked.

In 2003 the executive branch of the Taiwanese Government promised to act to legalize same-sex marriage, but backed down after a backlash.

Taiwanese President Ma Ying-jeou has said that public support would need to be greater before the government could include the right for same-sex couples in the country’s Human Rights Basic Law.

The Democratic Progressive Party supports reform on the issue but only holds 40 of the 133 seats in Taiwan’s legislative body.

Another case involving a non-transgender same-sex couple challenging the country’s ban on same-sex couples had been before Taiwan’s Judicial Yuan but was dropped after the court repeatedly delayed making a ruling.

A poll last year found that 55% of Taiwanese people support marriage equality.